


Put A Price On Emotion

by soulselfs



Category: DC - Fandom, Jason Todd - Fandom, Jayrae - Fandom, Raven - Fandom
Genre: AU, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, robrae - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:33:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 35,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22032631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soulselfs/pseuds/soulselfs
Summary: Raven and Jason grew up with something special blooming between them—a connection that was scarce and beautiful and born in the simplicity of a fleeting summer camp. Five years after everything crashes and burns in the silence of a written letter, they find themselves face to face once more.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Koriand'r, Jason Todd/Raven, Jason Todd/Rose Wilson, Jayrae - Relationship, Mildly but:, barely but....yeah
Comments: 11
Kudos: 61





	1. Put A Price On Emotion

The log gleamed bronze behind the fire as it swallowed the branches. 

Slivers of orange could be seen through the cracks of the wood before they were overcome in flames too, joining the sharp crackling fire. The shades of the flames were beautiful, from light golden to blazing orange and blinding yellow. The sound was a mingle of frequent sharp crackles accompanied with that soft whisper of heat. 

It was entrancing; the way that the flames seemed to breathe into life from the pit of fire, from the grind and wither of branches and then simply disappear into the air, only seen through the gentle heat on cheeks.

A loud sound interrupted Raven from her thoughts. 

A piercing cacophony of laughter making the beauty of warm flame dull, a few voices unbearably loud and slightly obnoxious, noisily shoving their bulked and broad bodies into the circle and bringing a spotlight with themselves.

Raven realized the flame must not disappear into the air after all, instead seep its way into her veins and spread through her body, thrumming in her heart and filling her lungs into a disappointed sigh and annoyance.

She couldn’t help but drag her eyes to the sight before her, the attention of her once quiet company of friends entirely diverted to a familiar string of boys sitting on the once beautifully bronzing log, now hidden by the shadow of their long legs.

These particular arrangements of boys and girls were siblings, half famous by their multi billionaire father’s name and half infamous by their well known wittiness and shenanigans. They were the most puzzling and infuriating sort; muses of gifted talent in a range of subjects yet also familiar faces to detention hours. Some were leaders in making their lives eventful, while others were followers and partners-in-crime.

The Wayne family was a sight to behold regardless, but these particular group of brothers and sisters added a type of addicting color, a sight so cliche and unbearable and yet everyone would find themselves in a trance of admiration. Their dynamics, gestures, humor, easiness, enticement—it all contributed to being well favored but not popular in the stereotypical sense so that they felt above anybody.

They were people anybody could be comfortable with, and therefore people everyone would have liked without the fame of their father and the ridiculous amounts of money that came with that.

And Raven couldn’t help but despise them.

Truthfully, she wasn’t sure exactly why she wasn’t under this pathetic spell that the rest of the town seemed to be under. Though she caught herself smiling at their witty humor or curious about their vibe, she couldn’t help but feel a certain bitterness within her towards them. Yet, if she were truly exhausted enough in the deep of night and alone to her thoughts, she would realize that this useless pondering as to why she held such harsh feelings for them was for one particular reason.

But there were other, pettier reasons too.

They were just too perfect. Just professional enough to be praised by the public, and just childish enough to get along with the rest of the kids. It seemed to Raven that there was little flaw to them objectively, and she wondered if they were gifted with an expectedly happy life simply because of their upbringing.

Was it fair that society worked that way? She didn’t think so. 

Raven, who had felt like she was fighting her whole life from the moment her father left before she could barely attend school to having a single, overworked and exhausted mother who found more shelter in shiny bottles and bitter liquid than talking to her own daughter about all the unspoken issues between them. 

Desperately holding on to one job and another, dreams put aside for a lonelier reality instead, in hopes she could maybe become big enough to turn it around for her mother and herself.

Those don’t seem to be struggles that the Wayne family could understand, and though she supposes it isn’t right to feel so bitter at a kind and generous group of people, she simply couldn’t fight off the dirty feeling that the lack of flaws made them copies of a stale Mary Sue.

Like marble structures, she thinks, remembering that lovely school trip they had to a posh museum in Italy. Beautiful and forever unwaveringly so, but not a crack to appreciate the finger molded silk dresses or the soft outline of scarily realistic marble skin.

Her thoughts were interrupted by one of their voices; broodingly deep enough with a boyish streak, softly spoken like smoothened silk and slowly dripping honey but raspy and rough enough around the edges that reminded her of the wispy crackle of the fire before her.

She looked up without realizing, of course, for she knew that voice far too well.

Sun kissed skin, the shadows and highlights made from the flames looked as though they were in love with every sharp angle of his jaw and nose to the softer dip of his lips and cheeks. They danced about his face calmly like waves peacefully kissing the shore. His hair, a pitch black soft and somewhat side swept like it was unintentional, a single slightly curled strand teasing at his eyes. And his eyes—a cacophony of colors, pine green teased by the speckled light of the fire bleeding the color into lighter dancing shades. She wondered if you could see flecks of chartreuse if you got close enough, close enough to see how swollen and red his lips were from chewing on them too much.

He was speaking, saying something that made Tim and Damian facepalm while the rest of the circle laughed along. It wasn’t until his lips pressed together closed and his eyes drifted to meet her gaze that she realized she’d been staring. The slight movement made her stomach sink and her throat catch.

And if her cheeks were burning, she wouldn’t be able to tell you if it was the warmth of the fire, the embarrassment and shame of being caught staring so boldly at him of all people, or the heat from his lingering stare long after she’d looked away.

-

The walls of their camp cabin holds a strange feeling.

It’s littered with various splatters of paint and old stickers. She can’t see it from here, but Raven knows that if you look over the dresser slightly, you’ll see carvings in children’s handwriting right above the creaky floorboards that ratted them out in a game of hide and seek ten years ago.

She looks at the ceiling until it burns in her eyes, it flashes in her head and images are peeling through her vision until her mind is swept by the earliest memories at this familiar autumn camp.

Ten years ago.

At that time, her mother was just beginning to really sink under the weight of empty pockets and bank accounts. Raven wasn’t old enough to cook or care for herself yet, so she’d patiently wait for her mother to come home in the silent hours of night to prepare her a meal. And when she came, exhausted from the traffic and from her relentless work hours, Raven would always feel a sense of guilt.

A child at the age of eight should have never felt like a burden to her mother, but that was the feeling that’d swirl around her like a dark cloud while she slept on the mattress on their one bedroom house or stack heavy books on the floor to teach herself the problems she didn’t understand in her homework.

So Raven has proposed a project that her school had been preparing and funding, a four month long camp covering the summer break months to familiarize with classmates and build teamwork and trust.

And her mother, nursing a bottle of something once unfamiliar between nervously chewed lips, had nodded and signed the form without a look in her direction, her shoulders seeming ten times lighter. It hurt a little bit, but less than the feeling like she was a liability to her sole present parent.

That was how she ended up in these camps of fleeting summer and chilly daylight and nighttime with smoothened green leaves becoming orange crispy ones, crumbling beneath feet every year, among a little less than half her grade at school.

And consequently among Jason Todd.

Jason, who from the youngest age had something different running in his veins, was constantly stealing spotlight intentionally or unintentionally. He was always the quiet whisper at the back of the room that cracked up the class, the one who kept wearing hats just to piss off grumpy teachers, who somehow convinced the bus driver, Mr. Hopps to drive the school bus one day and then floored it on an empty street.

He was suspended, and the careless Mr. Hopps fired.

Raven remembered that he was much shorter than he was now, though nobody had the chance to pick at him for it as his large shadow of a personality always made up for it. A charm bloomed in him that surely had been sprinkled on him like dandelion seeds from his older brother. He always had the greenest eyes, a dimpled smile with pearly teeth and a contagious laugh.

Rebellious, mischievous, awfully impish and witty humor—but there was something else that Raven had seen about him and she had remembered it vividly. The first time—something gentler and soft when they’d found the same place to hide during a game of hide and seek at the age of eight, and he’d brought some bread and apple slices stuffed into his pockets because he knew that many birds lay their nests in the trees of that area.

Before then, Raven had always believed that people are as they same. It was a concept that you’d believe was difficult for a child to grasp, but not unless she had grown up embracing that idea. Her mother was tired, burdened and sad, and there was nothing else to her. Her father didn’t think his partner and only daughter was good enough to stay, and there was nothing else to him.

That concept was rattled from her mind that day.

“How’d you know they make homes here?” She whispered, watching out for any signs of being caught by fellow campers.

“I saw them,” He had whispered back. “I don’t know if there’s enough worms in the dirt so I brought them some food.”

Raven had smiled wide, wider than she had in awhile.

“I hope they like apples and bread,” She said, kneeling down next to him, watching him rip off bits and pieces and toss it over to the group of happily chirping birds.

He had looked over at her, given her a few pieces of the crushed up food, a little blush on his cheeks and a toothy grin. She felt something different radiated off of him, something that she hadn’t normally felt when she watched him and his brothers thrive in their own ways.

“I hope they do, too.” 

During that time, raven remembered that memory the next morning, when she awoke to the melodious singing of sparrows. She had assumed that Jason remembered it too, because he’d given her a cheeky smile and a secret nod to the happy trees when they’d begun a new game of hide and seek that afternoon.

They’d run off together, without realizing, into the boundaries of camp and had explored as much as they could. Living fantasies through the eerily perched branches and the beautifully bubbling ponds, giving hilarious dialogue to the toads that croaked beside the water and the little ants that climbed the trees. Raven hummed a rhyme about marching ants and trees, and before long, Jason had once again enraptured her attention by giving a hilarious rendition of it, in complete dramatic, theatre child fashion.

They’d talked about books, because Jason Todd apparently read books, and brought them to camp like Raven as well. The one they read the most, however, was the one book Raven had, as she couldn’t afford to buy many more and she despised returning books to the library. Jason would toss away all of his own and would instead spend forever buried in that one book.

It was called The Little Prince, and reading it was nearly magical. There was something beautiful about it, something always interesting, something that never got boring no matter how many times they read it or switched up the roles. It was in the text, in the beauty of their near understanding of every little word and sentence, their little and inexperienced minds never truly grasping the meaning of every part.

“All grown-ups were once children, but only a few of them remember it,” Jason once read out slowly. He seemed to be particularly perplexed about it, and Raven found herself lost in the words too.

“I don’t know if my mom was ever a kid like us,” Raven said, playing with a twig.

Jason had been silent for a while, watching her twirl around the piece of tree, his lips being chewed between his teeth in puzzling thought. Then, he had hummed and nodded like he was in agreement, but Raven never really knew what he was agreeing to.

Then, quietly, as they felt it was time to get back, he had whispered something.

“I feel like we’re the only kids.”

The two of them had hid that particular book in secret places like below a thick patch of autumn leaves and then visited it the next time they played a game like hide and seek, or in the early hours of the morning before the sun broke into the horizon. 

Not long after, they’d assigned themselves characters from the books and and made capes and gowns from the stolen blankets of the cabins. Once, a councilor had caught Jason trying to take a blanket to the forest and he feigned having the flu, offering a comedic and sarcastic performance that had Raven in stitches.

“What do you mean ‘I’m not sick’?” He had said, faux shock overtaking his face. “Some camp councilors you are!” 

They talked about everything, but barely about their families.

It had been like that for those months at the young age of eight. Every day, they’d found something more exciting within the safety of the forest and the familiarity of the long grassed plain that bled out into the borders of camp.

They’d always come back as winners of the game, shrugging off suspicions and giving each other giddy looks while everyone else wondered where their hiding spots were. Eventually, the councilors had proclaimed the forests off limits for the remaining week of that year of camp, and they felt crushed.

Raven tried to put on a nonchalant face, and when she looked over at Jason, he stared back with a grumpy pout and frustration radiating off of him. It made her giggle. Jason was always very passionate about expressing his annoyance, after all. He had once told her that it was his favorite emotion.

That day, they’d played hide and seek and panicked. The two of them ran off into the cabins as a last minute destination, kneeling on the floorboards just below the large window. Somehow, they’d managed hidden on the dusty floor for at least an hour, enough time for the sun to begin setting down and dipping into the black night that bled across the sky in blues and yellows and oranges.

Jason had been unusually quiet, and it had made Raven fidgety and nervous. His usually loud demeanor was gone, and was instead replaced by only the sound of his pen carving into the wood, making irregular shapes in the thick of the wall.

“What’s wrong, Jay?” She had said, poking his arm. He barely responded, so she had tackled him in tickles instead and felt a young relief upon hearing his muffled laughter, hand over his mouth in worry they’d be caught.

“Nothing’s wrong,” He had said, holding her hands away from his hips, giggles still bubbling out. Suddenly, he seemed quite hesitant and nervous enough that Raven wondered if he’d bolt. But then, he looked up at her and put on his determined face. “But I have a secret.”

“What secret?” Raven had said, gasping. 

Jason had smiled shyly, that blush returning to his cheeks.

“You’re my favorite,” He had whispered, two small hands on either side of her ear to make it as quiet and private as possible. 

“Out of all the girls?” She had asked, remembering all the pretty and cool girls that went to the camp and school, the ones that wore the nicest clothing and carried small colorful purses.

“Out of everyone,” He’d shrugged bashfully, biting his smile down, elbows resting on his knees as he drew random shapes with a pencil on the floor, completely unaware that Raven had been placing her cool hands on her cheeks because they were burning for some reason and it didn’t make sense, and neither did the floppy feeling in her tummy.

It was like that for five years—sharing a few months together in person for five years because Jason attended another school with wealthy children. He always talked about how much he despised it, a fact that had always confused her. In the several months they never spoke, they would send endless letters and arranged to meet just a handful of times in playgrounds or to feed the ducks.

One particular year, at the age of twelve in camp, they’d watched the creatures at the pond on the back of a bark. It was a peaceful sound; the bubbling of water and the croaking of toads, mingled with the sound of birds and Jason’s voice reciting a few quotes from The Little Prince.

“It is such a mysterious place, the land of tears,” He had said, a dramatic hum followed, and the silence was a question; a ponder if she could understand what it meant.

“Maybe it means you could cry from happiness and sadness, too,” She said, lifting her head to try to decipher the stars better.

Jason had been a bit quiet.

“Maybe it’s because there’s so many reasons why somebody could cry,” He had said, his eyes lost in the words on the pages. “Maybe it’s mysterious because nobody else knows why.”

For some reason, she kept note of that moment in her head. There seemed to be something off about his tone of voice, and although she considered herself paranoid, it stuck on the back of her mind without disappearing from her memory. It was a fear that would only grow the following year at thirteen years of age.

Those few months, things seemed a little bit different. Jason Todd seemed a little bit silently tragic, and there was nothing else that Raven could think about that described him better. His loudness and colorfulness was still there, but she alone could understand that it was almost forced feeling. His smiles to her were no longer bright or carrying the sunshine, but instead filled with an odd sense of trepidation that she couldn’t quite understand.

Trepidation. Perhaps that described that year better.

She didn’t know much warmth in her life, besides the feeling of the fire from their stove as they couldn’t afford a heater or the ones in campfires, but for some reason, being with Jason felt warm. In the nighttime during their stargazing, she’d close her eyes and listen to him recite quotes from The Little Prince, trying to memorize the feeling.

Trying to pretend she didn’t notice he seemed far too immersed in the sadder quotes.

“In one of the stars, I shall be living. In one of them, I shall be laughing,” He spoke quietly. The melancholy in the shapes of his words made an uncomfortable storm well up in Raven’s stomach. “And so, it will be as if all the stars were laughing when you look at the sky at night.”

A strange couple of questions had come to her mind that had surprised even her when she had blurted them out in a whisper.

“Why live and laugh in the stars?” She was asking him, not pondering the meaning of the quote. “Why not stay here, instead?”

Jason had stayed quiet.

That feeling, that warmth, came in an entirely different way, one that made her a little bit sick on the first day of middle school at thirteen years old. It didn’t feel gentle like the candle light, but instead more like a burning. He was supposed to come to transfer to the same school that year, and though it was comforting, Raven still felt awful on the last day of camp. She’d tried not to cry when they were saying goodbye, tried not to cry when they’d held pinkies like toddlers together like a promise about something, tried not to cry when she came back to a cigarette smelling home and a tired, tired mother.

And she’d spent all night long finding the coolest kinds of stories in her books, writing them all down in her little journal to tell them to Jason when she saw him in a few days. She even tried finding ones that were about motorcycles and cars because he seemed to be into those things at this age, hoping it’d make him smile brightly again. 

But then, there had been a letter delivered to her at her door in a strange hour. It had been obvious that somebody had come to drop it off. It was awfully formal and lacked his usual doodling in the margins, and only consisted of a few awful words that sealed many conclusions. 

I don’t think we should keep being friends. 

In the following years, when somebody would vouch to play hide and seek, Raven would never really try. There was surely that copy of The Little Prince somewhere in a brown lunch bag and buried deep into the dirt, the book her and Jason adored and memorized throughout the years, but she never really cared. She’d sit in a place that was easy to see, feeling too old for the game now anyway, and she’d always be one of the first ones that the seeker would find.

The other person who was always equally easy to find was no-one other than Jason Todd.

-

A loud crash.

It startles Raven up from the bunk bed, heart dropping to her stomach for a second before she whipped her head around to see a bottle of alcohol on the floor. It’s somehow not broken, and all the girls are mirroring her expression of shock and concern before they collectively fall into simultaneous sighs and laughter of relief.

And the bottle is taken from the floor, and her friends are telling her something, but she cannot help but watch the place where it landed as memories of broken bottle pieces and the scent of a strong alcohol overwhelm her, memories of her mother’s worst days where she felt afraid.

Of what, she was never sure.

“Raven?” A concerned, soft and small voice interrupts her thoughts, brings her back to the present. It belongs to her friend Kory, who is staring at her with caring eyes. “I said, do you wish to play with us?”

Raven glanced at the bottle of alcohol cradled in Zatanna’s hands.

“You don’t have to drink,” Kory said, knowing her thoughts too well. “It’s just for fun.”

It brings her back to a memory of her little self asking a little, green eyed boy why adults always drink alcohol beneath their favorite tree.

I think it’s just for fun, he said, but Raven always felt like Jason only said half of what he meant to say.

Raven shook off the memory, swallowing something in her throat that she didn’t know was there. For a moment, she felt like everything in her tunnel of vision was made out of the thoughts in her head, unable to focus after the flashback of memories she had long choked down. She breathed in, exhaled slowly, and more out of politeness than anything, agreed to join them, earning happy cheers from the circle of girls. She climbed down the bunk bed lightly, painfully aware she was stalling before pattering away next to Kory, sleeves of her sweater pulled down and hugging the chilly scratch of cold from herself.

It was a game of truth or dare, but Raven’s mind felt occupied by a million questions as to why she had remembered that time after burying it away for so long. She’d learned to move on and ignore, but something inside her still wondered if she imagined that time where she felt happier than she had in a long time. Another, bigger piece of her felt pathetic about being hung up still on a randomly convenient friendship between two similar children.

It was very in character for Raven to show little emotion to others, but to be hung up on five year old drama that she should’ve forgotten about long ago. But kindred spirits are difficult to find, and more difficult to forget, and really easy to pretend the thoughts of them don’t burn in your mind to this day.

In one of the stars, a voice spoke in her head.

“Truth,” Kory said when the bottle spun towards her, earning surprised gasps and laughter from the rest of the girls. “I’m feeling very open today.”

I shall be living.

“We’ll see about that, my friend,” Cassie said doubtfully, quirking her eyebrows. “Kory Anders, what are your intentions with my brother?”

In one of them, I shall be laughing.

A round of ooh’s spread across the circle, girls clapping and patting the dark haired girl’s back joyfully, practically bouncing in their seats above the pillows on the floor. Cassandra had her arms crossed in waiting, a quirky and mischievous smile on her lips as she cornered Kory with eyes of steel.

And so, it will be as if all the stars were laughing when you look at the sky at night.

Another quote fluttered into her head, one in the voice of her own; I should have based my judgement upon deeds and not words. Suddenly, the nostalgic swirl of emotions in her chest became bitter.

“For the last time, I don’t have any intentions,” Kory said, though it was quite audibly obvious that nobody believed her. “He’s a nice person and I do not deserve to be grilled because of nonsensical rumors.”

That was a blatant lie, blatant enough to get Raven to snap from the voice in her head and crack under the second hand embarrassment. She found herself smiling and shaking her head, trying to figure out what conversation they were having. Once it clicked in her head, she found herself remembering catching Kory and Dick snogging behind the theatre stage at school, but it was too late to school her expression before Zatanna caught on.

“I think Raven feels differently,” Zatanna said, and Raven only smiled and shook her head further. “Do feel free to expose them—we all need some kind of leverage on Dick.”

“You’ll find no leverage with me!” Kory yelled.

Raven made a lip sealing gesture.

“I’m afraid I saw nothing,” She said with a shrug.

The girls laughed dubiously while Cassandra snapped her fingers, feigning defeat. An atmosphere of warmth covered the room and embraced Raven until she no longer thought of the memories once swarming her brain relentlessly, until the carvings reminded her of nothing more than carvings on wood.

And if she told herself that enough times, perhaps she would eventually believe it.

-

The sunlight bleeds through the curtains and blinds, spreading about them and then into the room in warm rays. It covered Raven’s eyelids, her slightly exposed pale shoulders and curled fingers, clutching onto the weak blankets in an attempt to hush the bruising cold. Her mind felt tender, as did the rest of her body, and she vaguely remembered a dream and a nostalgic feeling.

Her eyes are tightly closed, body feels heavy and immovable as though her bones are still sound asleep. She notes the sleepy rise and fall of her chest, calming air entering lungs and exhaling warmer than before. She feels limp with a teasing yawn at the base of her throat, stretching her limbs and finds herself repositioning herself beneath the blue blanket, completely relaxed and entirely not ready to wake up. 

Her friends had different plans, plans in the form of pillows thrown straight to her peacefully tucked figure.

She gasped, shooting straight up with her hands covering her face as they laughed and slammed pillows on her one by one, their loud voices shredding apart her tranquil atmosphere, shrill laughter cutting through the peace of morning time.

“Breakfast is in five minutes!” They yelled giddily as they ran outside, leaving behind a crime scene of pillows scattered about the suddenly silent room and a tangled haired Raven sitting half confused and half annoyed in her bed.

-

After breakfast, they had some time to linger around the wooden tables before the daytime activities began. From the look of the crushed up soda cans and dirty marshmallow sticks around the dewey grass, Raven expected the first planned activity was cleaning the entire camp from last night’s carelessness.

She instinctively looked over at that busier table the second she sat with her food, mind more entranced and attached to it ever since her spiral of memories last night. For some strange reason, she no longer felt the questioning and confusing despise towards the group immediately. Rather, there was a familiar sense of nostalgia, that she quickly tried to get rid of.

Sure enough, her eyes focused on one person, though she dreaded it greatly.

Jason Todd, who was much taller now, enough to hover over even Dick Grayson, sat strangely quiet at the table. His shoulders were broader from the version of him in her memories all those years ago, jawline defined with large hands and a strong bridge to his nose. He had sharpened out, the passage of time stripping him of most of the softness. 

He seems to be watching the trees, entranced in the soft dance of the weaker leaves with the weaving of the morning breeze that cools their corners. The green from them has slipped into autumn colors, slipped into the depth of his eyes as he watches intently. He looks like a verse from their favorite book, something mysterious and familiar.

Why are you still a curious observer of his character?

The birds chirp louder, and something changes in his expression. Something she cannot quite understand, and doesn’t have the time because he quickly looks down and is thrown into a vivid conversation with friends.

That bitterness within her manifested a few weeks after she returned to school, when she realized his ignorance was not a mistake in her own, young ways. He had continued to ignore her all throughout those weeks, and sometimes he’d freeze in the middle of the hallway hearing her voice and would look at her in a way she couldn’t define. It stirred within her chest and her worsening situation at home never made anything better, and neither did his usually present, easy, unaffected smiles and familiar ways of mischief. 

She supposed that somebody so loved, somebody who grew up in being surrounded by good things and good money and people flouncing themselves in his direction was something he was used to. He could afford to lose a single friend as herself in the bright lights of his upbringing.

Raven could not do the same.

And she told herself it didn’t matter, that they weren’t special, but she idiotically trusted her eight year old mind into thinking they shared something different for those few months than what he shared with everyone else— all despite some particular memories threatening to weave their way into her head.

Raven looked away and tried to focus on her sandwich instead.


	2. The Land of Tears

That afternoon, the weather was surprisingly nicer, the sunlight bathing everyone in warmth. It was a pleasant surprise for everybody, and the councilors quickly cancelled their activities for the day in favor for more summer focused ones, much to the delight of everybody, who immediately chose to play balloon tennis.

It was a simple game, but a little frustrating and most of the boys found it strangely competitive and addicting. Dozens of colorful balloons were served in the air, a single whack from a tennis racket sending them flying to the other side of the net, where they were walked back by a partner.

A golden hand calmly raised a pinkish balloon and threw it into the sky. Kory focused on it carefully before swinging her racket and sending it flying to Raven’s side. She was far too tall for this arrangement, and Raven scrambled, dashing and stretching forward to get it before it hit the floor.

A failure.

She ended up tripping over herself instead, fingers dug into the fresh grass and dirt. Raven could hear Kory burst into laughter seeing her misery, and she grinned smugly, quickly getting up to throw the balloon back at as much speed as possible.

Another failure.

The balloon was too light and airy, and only managed to float a little over the fence to barely touch Kory’s abdomen before falling lamely to the ground.

Raven groaned, annoyed, while Kory was sent into more heaps of laughter.

“How do you fail this bad?” She asked.

“What the hell even is ballon tennis?” Raven said smacking the racket on her head, and then immediately regretting it when it burned at her skin, leaving a red mark.

Kory seemed to have become silent, so Raven stopped touching her red forehead and looked up at her friend, who seemed lost in something behind her. Her eyes were reserved and a little bashful, confidence radiating out of her despite not even trying.

Raven looked back, and saw Dick Grayson, chatting animatedly to some random junior, and suddenly Kory’s random onslaught of buffering made a lot more sense.

“Oh my god,” Raven said, looking back at her, who rolled her eyes but couldn’t wipe the smile from her face. “Why don’t you guys just, like, talk? Figure out what you are?”

Kory looked at her with a single, raised an eyebrow. Raven couldn’t read her expression, unsure of why Kory was looking at her that way. It almost seemed as she deemed her guilty of something and was staring at her like she was a hypocrite. She didn’t try to reply in any snark, just stared at her with furrowed brows.

Behind her, Stephanie Brown passed and stopped close by. She was speaking to another friend, a girl who was twirling a strand of chocolate hair and staring at her, almost conflicted seeming.

“Do you think they’ll make it, like, official?” The girl asked, far too interested in the conversation.

Raven tried not to hear their conversation, but it wasn’t possible with how loud they were talking, trying to hear each other over the loud music playing, a heavy bass.

“There’s nothing to really make official,” Stephanie replied, shrugging. “Like I said, she told me that there wasn’t really any commitment between them, that it was just a casual thing and that they were more like friends than anything.”

“But he didn’t seem like, interested when he confirmed that they had a thing?” The other girl asked.

“Nah,” Stephanie said back. “It seems like there’s something going on with the guy and they’re just looking for an outlet.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” The other girl said. “Jason Todd has never in his life been the type to commit down, to be honest.”

The sounds around her seemed to halt to one, numbing and vague beat. Raven stood there, racket in hand, staring at the door, lips parted and not knowing if she heard right.

There were only two thoughts inside her head, both of which she refused to relate to the pain she was feeling in her chest. She felt pathetic. The ice crawling across her chest felt pathetic.

Of course he has somebody, she thought, almost having an instinct to laugh at her mind being shocked at the thought. Even if it’s not serious—of course he has somebody.

She must’ve been someone special to capture his attention. The thought of herself thinking like this in her head made her feel sick, like the walls she thought strong were fragile.

But there was something else as well, something that hurt her, particularly about the comment. The part of him not being able the type to commit, which burned in her ears and her brain. Had it been something that everyone had always known? The girl had said it so casually and matter-of-factly, and his own sister hadn’t bothered to deny it or defend him.

Why had she been the only one who thought different? Was it because she was a child? Was it because she was naive and starved of warmth her whole life? 

Thinking like this brought her back to memories of the aftermath that she refused to remember, but the words couldn’t get out of her head, and from the corner of her vision, she saw him.

Him, and another girl.

Another girl, who seemed awfully comfortable with him. She held onto his wrist, fingers reaching into his palm a little, and he loosely held her hand.

It made something in her entangle around itself uncomfortably, a feeling that she tried to waft away. This was ridiculous. She didn’t own him and was nothing to him for many, many years. Maybe even for all of time, if the voice in the back of her head was right. 

But they seemed to fit, and they seemed to fit well. For some reason, Raven searched his face in hopes of finding a smile, the same golden lopsided smirk, all mischief and confidence and radiance. And when she found nothing in his blank expression, instead of feeling relieved, she felt a little sad. 

Did she want him to be happy?

Raven shook the thought from her head. Judging a relationship between two people she barely knew was petty and felt awfully wrong, like something bitter and green in her chest. She had been treating it like they were a couple, despite what Stephanie said.

You’re a pathetic, ridiculous child, after all.

Raven believed the girl’s name was Rose. She was a confident young woman, all bold and black leather jackets and motorcycles. As a child, Raven remembered her being ignored and outcast, but these days she seemed to be thought well of by everybody in the school.

Her hair was sleek and silver, reaching her waist. Her eyes were sharp, piercing blues, outlined by the mascara. She wore her leather jacket and ripped skinny jeans, a vintage shirt surely worth a ridiculous amount of money, as her father was only second to Jason’s, the two of them being longtime business rivals.

“I wonder what their parents would think,” Kory said, amused. Raven jumped a little, snapping out of it and not realizing that her friend had come to stand beside her.

A friend of hers called her over, and she looked back at Jason. Something about him seemed to make her want to lure closer, but she settled for a quick whisper and a meaningful wink. Jason watched her as she left, the expression in his eyes hidden by the shadow of the cap on his head. He was quite into her, wasn’t he?

They fit well.

They fit well, and Raven felt sick at the feeling in her stomach and throat. It made no sense why seeing a girl with him was making her feel this way, and she refused to acknowledge it. 

She refused to acknowledge it, but Raven would think about it for hours, and she was well aware.

-

At some point, some had resorted to just tossing the balloons with their hands and stopping it from hitting the ground. Other had gotten basketballs from the closet and were playing four squares. Raven and her friends were sitting around a circle, balloons in their laps and tossed around them as they played a card game.

Truthfully, Raven had almost completely forgotten about earlier. She was nearly winning the game, and her dry humor of her friends were making her laugh and make her competitive streak come out.

“Traci, I think you’re going down next round,” She said to her friend who grumbled dramatically, and everyone laughed.

“If this was chess, I would’ve dragged all of you back to hell,” She said, frustrated as she looked at her cards, Raven hummed teasingly. “Yes, Raven, you too. You can’t beat me at chess.”

“Is that a challenge? We’ll play chess after this, then,” Raven said, getting approving hoots from everyone in their small circle. “Careful with what you wish for, Traci. I’ve been told I’m good at it. I have a thing for reading people’s emotions.”

Traci rolled her eyes, smiling, and then proceeded to gawk as Raven won from her, laughter ringing across them. She stared at her trick in disbelief, unsure how she’d managed to beat her so quickly.

Raven scooted out of the circle slightly, dusting her hands in victory.

Behind her, an unfamiliar voice suddenly spoke up. Raven looked behind her to be hit by the sight of Rose looking down at them, placing the leather jacket on the tennis racket cases.

“Hey, guys,” She said kindly. “Raven—are you playing? Can you watch my jacket please? I can’t get it dirty.”

Raven nodded quietly.

“Yeah, sure,” She said, her eyes trying to focus on the sight of the jacket instead. Raven was still a bit awkward in these kinds of situations, and especially with her in particular.

Rose quipped a quick ‘thank you’ before running back to her group of friends.

“You guys have heard, right?” Traci spoke up, and everyone nodded and hummed in agreement. “I’m not really sure if they fit, to be honest.”

Raven’s head snapped back at her.

“What do you mean?” 

Traci simply shrugged, watching Rose’s back disappear beyond the grassy area they were on. Raven looked back at the jacket, and realized it was certainly too big to be hers. There was a thought that came to her head, but she didn’t need to let the voice in her head say it out loud.

-

After a while, the girls decided to pack everything up and stay in their rooms for a while before lunch would be announced. Raven grasped the leather jacket, in hopes she’d see Rose somewhere back to the cabins.

The rest of her friends were pondering what the menu would be like, already dreading another sandwich day, and instead immersed in fantasies of stringy pizza and perfectly seasoned and fried chicken. 

Raven was dusting off her jeans when something came flying in her direction, splattering all over the grass, all the girls gasping and stepping back. It was another balloon from their games— the color of the sky—but it was full of water.

The girls seemed positively annoyed, and Raven heard someone shuffling quietly behind them. When she looked back, in hopes that it would be Rose, her words were caught in her throat.

It was Jason Todd, because of course it was.

He was soaked, small strands of hair sticking to his temples while the rest had been pushed back. Glistening water dripped in beads across his golden neck, curving in their path with every dip of his collarbones and the sharp edges of his jawline, and to his defined forearm. The white t-shirt he wore was soaked through and translucent, sticking to his chest and dipping down.

He looked like a dream, and it was painful to admit, and painful to stand in front of him. It didn’t make it any better that he was staring down at her with an unreadable expression, almost as if he wanted to bolt.

“Hey,” He forced out, albeit awkwardly, nodding in greetings to the friends behind her.

Raven flushed in something like embarrassment and awkwardness, taking her eyes away from him and feeling like an idiot. She focused on the splattered water balloon instead, clutching the leather jacket tighter in hopes that somebody would save her from this situation.

But then, he cleared his throat, and it almost seemed like a facade of charm came over his face. Or perhaps, it wasn’t a facade, and the reasons she felt that way were made from the remnants of once knowing so much about a person.

“The councilors said to come back to cabins. There’s an awful stench of cheese, so I’m guessing their gonna torture us with another sandwich day,” He said, pushing his hair back again with both hands. The girls groaned and laughed at the same time. Jason looked down to notice the jacket in Raven’s hands. “Oh. I was wondering where that was. I mean—is that mine?”

Raven looked up at him, horrified.

“Uh,” She stuttered out, holding the jacket out by the collar. “Rose. I was holding it for Rose? I’m guessing it's yours, then.”

Raven stared at the grass, though she could feel Jason’s burning stare on her once again. The heat of it and the awfully painful familiarity of it branded an image inside her mind, a memory she could’ve seen clearer if she squeezed her eyes shut. It was a simple memory; just the sight of his stare on that first day of middle school, before he had looked away.

Remembering it all, his stare no longer felt warm, nor was it burning. Instead, it felt stinging and cold. She absolutely despises the silence, and everything inside of her wanted to shove the jacket into his chest and walk away.

Before she could, however, Jason touched and grasped the jacket by the collar. The proximity seemed intentional, a slither of leather between their gripping hands.

“I’m sorry,” He spoke quietly, and Raven almost felt like she was slapped in the face for a moment before he hurried with the next few words. “For the balloon thing.”

To anybody else, it would’ve just been an awkward interaction between two people who never spoke. However, to Raven, those few words seemed like they were implying something. It felt even worse when he had quickly rushed to clarify himself. 

She wondered if he was afraid she’d think he was sorry for something else. And considering what that thing was, that was a really disgusting thing to do. Raven felt her blood boil, and her awkward nervousness flickered and glimmered like that of a weak candle before it was blown out by the breeze weaving through the trees.

Raven looked up at him.

“It doesn’t matter,” She said, shrugging, but there was a bite to her voice. “Not that big of a deal.”

She let go of the jacket, and turned around, ignoring her friend’s confused and concerned stares, the feeling of them on her back blurring out Jason’s presence and his gaze. As she walked away, she hoped he got what she meant, and something about the residual silence told her he did.

Good, she thought to herself, I hope it stings.

-

There's a rustling in the greener bushes, the ones where butterflies frequently visit. It’s covered in bulbous flowers of many colors, and it accents around the long, unwavering trees in the whisper of a breeze. In the middle of the natural circle of trees, is a wide ray of light illuminating the thick of the forest.

Jason turns his head only slightly, peeking away from the thick branch of the tree he’s hiding behind. He’s gasping for air as quiet as he can, examining the bushes, eyes darting across the area. His brothers have a knack for being sneaky and making excellent cops, and he’ll be damned if he loses a game of Fugitives to them.

He squints his eyes, trying to see the rustling bush better, when a small rabbit hops into sight, staring at him curiously as it bathes in the sunlight. Jason stares back at it, confused before he groans and keeps running forward.

He’s almost at home base. His brothers may be better at the calculations and predictions of these games than he is, but nobody knows these woods better.

Nobody except for one person.

Jason almost stops dead in his tracks when that thought comes to his head, and he considers slamming his head into any nearby bark in hopes that he’ll have enough amnesia to forget anything had happened. There’s an adrenaline rush inside of him, the blood pumping in his veins and making the drum of his ears bang—enough white noise in his head to breathe in and start running again.

The home base is within the boundaries of the small strawberry field that is guarded by a large gate and a small cabin where they keep their fresh fruits and baskets for picking activities. He just has to ignore his head long enough to get there, and then he can rub it in his brothers’ faces once and for all.

But his mind wanders to one thing. It always wanders to one thing.

He doesn’t try to think about anything else, any of the embarrassing details of that day about a week before when he had fumbled over to her, completely soaked and stuttering like a fool, and he especially does not wish to remember her words or her icy stare. It’s been an ongoing battle in his mind, something that has been appearing and something that he’s immediately tried to blow away by distracting himself with one thing and another.

Jason allows himself to be selfish enough to remember one thing though; her eyes. Blossoming across her irises were colors like a flowery violet, capturing the sunlight and turning it into something cold and detached. When he stared at them, he couldn’t move or think. He stared, and kept staring, because it felt like a child locked away in his chest was finally able to see through his skin and was in awe of what he had known so well.

Fuck, Jason thinks when he trips on a small rock. It sends him flying for a moment before he gathers his balance, staring at the ground for a moment and squeezing his eyes tight enough till they hurt, till the memories in his mind fade to make swirls and flashes of color. He opens them, groans in frustration without noise in fear of somebody lurking in the woods, and looks up to see the large flag of the strawberry fields.

Just keep going, he says to himself, and he continues running as fast as he can, his vision fleeting until something slams against his shoulder and he trips over properly, his body not being given enough time to react as his face tumbles straight for the ground.

“Dammit,” He says out loud, grasping at his arm which feels like it nearly twisted in its place. His muscles are throbbing sharply, the ache blooming across his entire arm and centers on the sensitive skin of his elbow. He clenches his teeth, inhales as much as he can with his face centimeters from the dewey grass and waits a few seconds for the pain to calm down.

Eventually, when his vision stops being vague, he notices somebody cursing near him. It must’ve been somebody who crashed into him, but there’s confusion swirling in his mind at that thought.

This is a shortcut that nobody knows about, he thinks, trying to decipher the figure of a person with every quick blink. Who could possibly have guessed—

Raven.

She’s on the ground, grasping her leg, and a few pained grunts leave her mouth before she begins to breathe slightly harshly and her head snaps back at him. The black hair underneath her purple hoodie whips around swiftly, resting on her shoulders.

Perfect, he thinks.

He barely has a chance to process the iciness in her glare before she stands up and begins speaking, surprising him but also making his chest pang.

“Listen, asshole,” She says, and her voice is so devoid of everything he once knew that it hurts something inside of him. She sounds positively pissed, and the lack of awkwardness about her tells him that she truly doesn’t care.

(And that, that hurts as well, but he’s aware he deserves it.)

“Next time, consider maybe using your eyes when you’re running like a madman,” She says, dusting off the grass and wincing when she moves her leg. “This counts as a tag. You can haul yourself back to jail.”

She tries to walk, but it’s awfully visible that it hurts, and she finds herself grasping at a bark instead. Raven gives out a defeated sigh, but limps away from the scene nonetheless.

It takes Jason another thirty seconds to process what had just happened. It was true, he hadn’t really been watching where he was going, and he hadn’t seen her coming from his side view. And now, her leg was throbbing in pain, with muscles surely twisted and swollen, all because of him.

He looks at her retreating back, and feels an emptiness overtake him. It takes everything in Jason to remind himself that everything he kept yearning for was long gone, killed to something smaller than dust by himself. But she’s right there, and her body is slim and matured, and her face is beautiful, God, she’s beautiful, as every feature despises him. 

There’s a limp to her walk, and he feels his shoulder heavy with the knowing that it was his fault, especially because he’s all too well aware that she means too many things behind her few blank words.

It’s always his fault. In the past few years, nothing has changed. He hasn’t changed one bit. He’s still the same damned person, the same one he thought he was getting rid of all this time.

He cannot take the sight of her limping and sighing any longer. 

“Raven,” he calls out her name, and it feels like whiplash, especially when he notices how she falters and pauses. Has he even said that name in the past five years? Certainly not. “Raven, let me help you.”

There’s a few seconds of silence.

“I don’t need it,” She says, but she sounds strangely unbelievable. Her voice is small, and melancholic, and Jason tries his hardest to ignore why she may sound like that.

“You do,” Jason said, simply.

He walked over to her, and pinched the sleeves of the hoodie scrunched at her wrists lightly with his better arm. She doesn’t move, and Jason feels like it’s not because she appreciates it, but because she knows she needs help and is angry that he’s the one standing there to help out of all people.

Lightly, his fingers wrap around her wrist, with the lightest whisper of a squeeze. Touching her in this physical sense after so long was surreal, and he couldn’t shake the thousands of emotions going through him. It almost made him dizzy.

But he knew right now wasn’t the time.

Jason lifted her arm, and felt her pull away slightly, their bodies not touching. Jason snaked an arm around her waist, trying to ignore the hammering in his throat and chest. He limped along with her until they reached a lake.

There were a thousand words left unsaid, and you could feel them unspoken between the two. The didn’t speak of how the last time they’d been touching, it was their pinkies interlocked. They didn’t speak of how their bodies knew where to twist and turn and curve in the forest. They didn’t speak of how different their bodies were, of how tall he was now and how shaped she was.

Instead, they reached the glistening waters and Raven retracted away from his touch like it burnt her, and she may as well have burnt him in the process.

She sat on a rock, staring off into the waters, and Jason chose to lean against a nearby tree. His arm still ached painfully, but his mind couldn’t be bothered to focus on the tenderness. Instead, his eyes were transfixed to the sight of her back, the slimming at the dip in her waist and the curve of her hips. 

Jason couldn’t see her eyes, but he knew they were stormy. He couldn’t see her face, but he knew it’d be twisted into a frown. He couldn’t see her hands, but he knew they’d be gripped together in a clasp like she always did when she was nervous as a child.

It was unfair, and it was selfish, but he still felt a happiness about knowing these little things about her. It almost brought a smile to his face, but the smile was watery and annoyed at the world, at his life, and at himself.

You fucked up the one good thing, he thought to himself, tracing his knuckles. You fucked it all up.

He looked back at her. The fingers on his hands itched to tuck the hairs covering her eyes behind her ear, like he’d done before. Touch her chin lightly and have her face him, like he’d done before. 

Tell her that she was all he could think about, like he’d never done before.

And he felt guilty feeling those things. The self hatred festered and festered until he heard her sigh, a few words leaving her mouth that would keep him stunned to place at the whiplash of his own reality.

“Why are you still here?” She asked, hugging herself closer.

Jason didn’t know what to say. My arm is hurt, but that’s just an excuse. I’m already caught. I need a reason just to stay right here. It might be the last time.

“Aw, come on, now. Don’t you want some company, Raven?” Jason said with a strained laugh, and he regretted it the second he said it. His mind had raked through what he would say in this situation and said what he would to just anybody else, but this wasn’t just anybody else.

Say something, Jason said when he was greeted with silence. He could literally feel the anger around her, and could tell she was probably finding the perfect way to chew him out. When he got nothing in return but a long sigh, he felt even worse, somehow.

“You are a performance,” Raven said, her voice was quiet and small. “A court jester and nothing more.”

Fuck, that hurt.

Minutes passed in agonizing silence, Jason pretending like the harshness growing in his throat wasn’t from her words. She was right, and he wasn’t supposed to be like this. If this were anyone else, he’d have a retort or a joke ready to be said, but his mind was blank.

A plain white canvas, with her words written in large black strokes. Why was he feeling hurt? Why did he felt so vulnerable and naked around her? He hated the feeling of being so weak.

“I asked you a question,” She said suddenly, her leg better as she stood up from the stone.

Jason looked up at her. The sight of her back in front of a large glistening pond, the bubbling water and the croaking of frogs. The cool breeze and the greying sky as the clouds rolled in and the sunshine shrunk.

All that was missing from a scene of a past time was a small book and two very enamored children.

“I can’t leave you behind,” He said, immediately realizing the irony of his own words. When she gave a painfully cheerful scoff and stared at the sky, he knew she found it ironic, too.

“Well, as a matter of fact,” She said, walking away from him with barely a limp. “I can.”

He stared at the sight where her back retreated into the woods for a long time.

-

Jason felt transfixed on the patter of the rain, the pooling small puddles dripping down the windowsill in clear beads, reflecting the gloomy evening weather. The glass of the windows seemed to vibrate with every clap of thunder, a vast spark loud enough to illuminate the dewey peaks of the soaked grass and then breathe out a terrifying growl.

“It was a mysterious place, the land of tears,” Jason mumbled quietly.

Beside him, Tim Drake breathed out in a hefty sigh, shifting slightly in his seat.

“The Little Prince?” He asked, sounding exhausted and annoyed at the weather.

Jason didn’t nod, or blink or breathe. He left those few words linger in the air in fear the feeling of it would disappear while his eyes were fixed on the sliding raindrops. He tried to hold back his thoughts, but every corner of him that was cold from the chilliness in their room felt aching for a faraway warmth, one that reminded him of warm lavender eyes like the teasing purple in the sunset’s colors.

Lavender, like the color the sky would’ve been by now had it not been for the weather. Jason felt transfixed on the beads of raindrops. They seemed to dull out as his vision focused on the dark damp trees outside, the rain pouring down on them mercilessly.

He knew every tree well. He knew the forest, too. The depth of it, the shallow and full parts. He knew what was still messily carved into trees and the sound of children’s laughter that the forest had embraced and held onto, a part of something sweeter left behind. Every corner was memorized and burned into a bittersweet memory in his brain long ago.

These kinds of thoughts he had tried not to bring back into his mind, but they remained there, taunting and obvious and only became more apparent every time he came to this godforsaken camp. It would’ve been a hundred times easier had he simply quit it after that time ended and spent months figuring out how to distract himself better instead.

What was more terrifying was how he had heard her voice up close, her voice that was speaking to him for the first time in five years. It was more mature, more straightened out in every crisp pronunciation of her words. There was an achingly familiar quietness to it, however, that made him try and remember how that quietness sounded when she was younger.

I could listen to your voice for as long as possible.

Raven—and it made his heart skip a beat to even think about that name—was painfully quiet and nonchalant, her expression unreadable and almost bored at first. Like she didn’t want to be there, like she’d rather have been in the presence of anybody else. It hurt, and Jason knew what hurt felt like, though he hated the feeling, and hated himself for being so vulnerable even in the privacy of his head.

It’s all your fault.

He knew it all too well, but it didn’t help. It felt like there were a hundred reasons why he ignored her after camp, and none of them felt justified enough to deprive himself of someone who made him feel like he wasn’t as alone as he thought he was. He supposed that was selfish, but the interactions they’d had, the way he’d seen her up close and hurt at the sound of her cruel words made him remember she was real, and he felt pathetic.

She didn’t need to know any of those reasons, Jason was positive she didn’t care any longer, but the anger still clearly lingered. She deserved an apology, but he was too much of a coward to open his mouth and speak and explain. And then he’d find himself spiraling, thinking about how the corners and outline of his body wanted to fit against hers, wanted to feel her head innocently tucked on his shoulder and in the crook of his neck and admire her—only admire her, if nothing else, for enough years to fill the stars. She didn’t need to know that, either.

He had remembered her from the moment he saw her that first day at camp. She was awfully quiet, and her expression was unreadable but she was unique and intelligent and a pretty girl. He wasn’t old enough for that to make his heart slam into the skin of his chest then, but he was old enough to become a red, blushing mess at a girl talking to him.

Raven didn’t need to know that he’d always been so good at swallowing down the lump in his throat and blinking away all his tears in front of anybody his whole life, but then after he couldn’t tighten his throat and squeezed his eyes shut hard enough to stop the tears from falling down his cheeks and the sob in his throat. That he threw a pillow at his shelf in anger at how weak he felt and felt relief at the vases and books shattering and falling down.

His father—Bruce—had once told him that holding everything inside without an output wasn’t a good thing to do. So he had scoffed at him and called him a hypocrite, and then joined the boxing club at their gymnasium, all whilst loving the burn of his muscles with every fist beating the punching bags. He imagined himself on the punching bag, and would get far too lost in the satisfaction. 

It was violent and rough and aching, everything that she wasn’t. And it was violent and rough and aching, everything that his life had spiraled to become.

“I just thought of something we could do at that party we were planning,” Dick interrupted his thoughts.

“It’s weeks away, Dick,” Tim replied. “This is strange, you’re overthinking more than I am.”

“Have you guys ever heard of a hook up closet?”

-

The fire is gleaming all the same, a luminescent warmth in the pillow of all the shades of orange, stealing the attention from the sparks fluttering around it. In it’s enrapturing presence, she could have easily distracted herself.

However, there’s an ache in her leg that leaves her enough to get her mind drifting, only to cruelly yanked her back into reality with every aching sting of pain. The warmth of the fire does little, the ice pack stings harshly against the tender skin, and her fingers make it sear and twist. There’s nothing she can do but hope for the painkillers to work while she waits and remembers, and remembers and remembers.

His face during that jacket interaction days ago had almost made the cruel words in her mouth stay abandoned in her throat. For a moment, she felt sympathy seeing the conflicting expression so boldly written all across his face.

Boldly had been the right word. Once she had centered herself in all but a few seconds, the words came out easily, like a steady stream flowing down the smooth rocks of mountains. Once she had remembered and realized what he had done; abandoned her without explanation after letting her pour herself out to him, it had been easier to face him with bitter sentences before she had left him by the lakeside.

Raven wouldn’t lie; it had been slightly harder to leave when the conflicting expression had now been visible hurt. She was all too aware with his reluctance to be open, and his fondness for deprecation and stone faced barriers.

But the truth was obvious; they had been friends and positively closer than anybody else. They had shared things that they swore they’d never told to anybody else, and spent a plethora of days getting too close and smiling too wide. In the matter of an instant, he had clearly forgotten about it all, in favor of ignoring her altogether.

Raven had spent years pretending like it bothered her, but she never truly acknowledged his fault, not the way she was acknowledging it now.

You were a child back then, and children make mistakes, she thought to herself once she’d returned to the medical tent from the lake. You’re nineteen now, though, an adult. You should know how to apologize and explain before acting like everything is peachy.

Was she expecting too much? Was she not reading the whole picture or ignoring some bits that were easier to ignore? Raven didn’t think so. Instead, what was festering inside of her was pure disdain, and she could feel it almost spill over the edge. Still, she felt she was not entirely resolute in her stance, and the thought was eating her alive.

She’d seen his eyes, and the ever so slight raise of the corners of his eyebrows, the barely there wrinkle between them, the clear frown on his face. If nothing else, it was the melancholy that was pouring in waves within his emotive eyes. It was the voice inside her mind telling her there was more to his character that she believed, though Raven knew it was not a justified thought.

It was not her job to figure him out, and that much she knew to be true. She had deserved better than that.

And there was something else she was confident about as she thought to herself a very simple thought.

He’s an asshole, and that’s true. And he’s beautiful, and that is also.

-

His absence around the fireplace was clear, though before Raven could wonder if he’d been moping somewhere around camp, a voice among the bonfire chimed in about how he was surely with Rose, as they’d spent the last few hours missing from the crowd.

“I think they’re getting serious,” The voice said, sounding surprised.

“Not a chance,” Another voice said, one sounding similar to that of Rose’s friend. “I told you, she’s just doing a favor for him. Just two people trying to distract themselves with one another.”

Raven told herself she didn’t care either way, but those words stuck with her and made her confused. She couldn’t understand what that was supposed to mean, and it seemed too complicated to process at the moment. She told it to herself continuously when the pair came into the bonfire together, earning whoops from the circle of students. They had sat down in front of her, and suddenly the fire felt colder somehow.

Raven rubbed her hands together, hugging herself around the waist. She placed her head on her crossed knees lightly, squeezing her eyes shut and focusing entirely on the pain in her leg, hoping that the painkiller would kick in eventually.

That was when she heard an activity of questionnaire blossoming across the crowd, and she raised her hand to opt out along with Traci, who sat beside her on the log, wrapping her arms around her shoulders in hopes they’d both feel some warmth during the particularly cold night.

“I thought you’d be excited to join,” Raven said, staring at the ponytailed black hair cuddling by her shoulder. “Haven’t you always said that you like getting to know people better?”

Traci looked up, shrugging with a smile.

“Not this crowd,” She said, then glanced at a few times to someone behind Raven, who instantly looked behind her to see Jaime fiddling with his hoodie strings and agreeing to join the game.

Raven raised her eyebrows.

“Are you sure about not wanting to know this crowd, now?” Raven said, smiling, earning a tackle of pinching from her friend. They laughed, and suddenly Raven felt more lighthearted in her friends’ comforting presence. “You and Kory are useless.”

Traci groaned.

“No, I'm useless,,” She said, sighing exaggeratedly before pointing at Kory, who’d been talking to Dick a while before, and had been sitting next to him in the circle. “He’s kind of an idiot so it seems she’s taken it upon herself to woman up.”

They awed in admiration, before Traci nudged Raven with her elbow.

“Tell me, what about you?” She asked. “There’s no way you don’t have a thing for anybody, right?”

Raven looked at her for a few seconds, before shrugging and rubbing her hands together again for the warmth.

“Not this crowd,” Raven said quietly. Traci seemed to pipe up at the thought that she had something for another crowd, which Raven quickly shot down. “Not any crowd probably within a five thousand mile radius, actually.”

Traci laughed, and Raven tried to find it humorous as well, before they fell into a comfortable silence in their own thoughts, hearing what everyone had to say.

“First question,” Terra said, tucking a beautifully glowing blonde strand of hair behind her ear. “What is your biggest practical fear?”

The questionnaire began. Some gave comedic responses that sent everybody wiping the laughter induced tears from their eyes. Others gave serious ones with elaborate backstories, engaging the audience in with interest. Some gave the typical fears like heights, spiders and other animals.

“I don’t really think I have one, to be honest,” Rose answered, shrugging. “My fears are probably being misunderstood or something like that.”

Everyone gave it a moment of thought, some of the voices agreeing with her comment. After a few minutes of discussion, it was Jason’s turn to discuss his fears.

“Clowns, man,” Jason said surprisingly simply, making everyone around the circle of children fall into laughter.

“No, but seriously,” He said, and suddenly his voice went awfully quiet, as did the entirety of the crowd. Raven tried her best not to look up, but a mere glance told her that his eyes were focused on the fire, almost reluctant and hesitant seeming. “Listen, I really hate the dark. I’ve always hated it, to be honest.”

Everyone laughed, because for some reason nobody seemed to take him seriously. At the sound of those words, Raven’s eyes immediately shot up and stayed on his face. Her chest was feeling something, something that swirled like the way hurt did, but it was sweeter and tender and made her breath feel like it was stuck at the bottom of her throat.

Jason was afraid of the dark, apparently, yet she distinctly remembered a memory. The memory of him sneaking out of his cabin and walking in the middle of the night into the forest when she’d gone missing from that nightmare.

Had he been terrified, then? He must’ve, if what he was saying was true, but he’d gone into the thick darkness of the forest, through all the corners where no light shone and your vision couldn’t adjust well enough. He’d done it, all while being afraid, because he was worried.

Worried about her.

Could that have been right?

Raven kept looking at him. She kept looking at him and begging him to look up, so that her eyes wouldn’t only be fixated on the stripe of glistening of his eyelids, just before the pretty fanning of his black eyelashes. Begging him to look up, so that she could find something she was missing in the curtains of his eyes; something that would dismiss her thoughts and stop the feeling in her chest, the sudden rise and fall making her stomach turn.

“No wonder you came after me earlier,” Rose said with lightheartedness, her voice stripped of any real malice. “Couldn’t come here alone, huh?”

Everyone laughed again, but Raven kept staring at his eyelids, ignoring the pull of his lips at the hilarity around the circle. Eventually, when he looked up, he was looking at Rose with a playful eye roll, a glance to Raven happening so quickly that she wondered if she’d imagined it, before he looked with faux interest to the person after him sharing their practical fears.

Am I overreacting? Raven thought to herself, feeling a little naive.

“Alright, next question,” Terra asked once the first round ended. “What is your favorite quote or phrase and why?”

Everyone took a moment to gather their thoughts, realizing the questions had become from simple to quite thoughtful within a single round. When they were finished, they began answering one by one across the circle as before.

Eventually, it was Kory’s turn.

“Language is wine upon the lips,” Kory said, smoothly. “It’s from Virginia Woolf; I believe it is something that provokes much thought, which is why I consider it my favorite.”

Dick smiled at her.

“One that I really love is the one by my favorite poet, Edgar Allen Poe, I think,” He said, a slight question to his words. “All we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”

A series of ooh’s was rewarded.

“Dick, I’m pretty sure you’ve already got the girl,” Damian said, scrolling mindlessly through his phone and ignoring the thoroughly amused response from everyone with the wave of roar and Dick’s embarrassed face. “There’s no need to manifest a love for poetry to impress her.”

Kory placed a delicate hand atop her mouth, trying to stifle her laughter, which made both Raven and Traci smile fondly.

“Moving on because Dick looks like he’s gonna faint,” Rose said, entertained. “Mine is ‘Life is too important to be taken seriously,’. I remember seeing it somewhere, and I seriously think it’s true.”

“Oh, good one,” Terra said, agreeing with a thumbs up. “It’s your turn, Jason.”

Raven looked over at Jason, his words from before still wandering across her mind. He seemed awfully interested in the flickering flames of the fireplace, his face holding a curious expression. Rather, it was expressionless, his eyes seemingly empty and lost in space, an apparent facade slipping from his face the longer Raven watched him staring deeply into the fire.

Rose nudged him lightly, and he seemed to snap out of it. In an instant, the facade seemed to slip back on, and he made a cheeky joke that everyone was amused to hear, before clearing his throat.

Raven stared back on the ground, trying to decipher the individual strands of green emitting from the rich ground, watching the highlights of the bonfire flickering across their expanse like the dancing shadows of water. Despite her efforts, her heart felt stuck in her throat, awaiting most impatiently for his answer, her mind already feeling starved over having something to mull over again.

“I actually have a few,” Jason said casually and Raven caught herself nodding in agreement, remembering the variety of books he used to read before quickly shaking her head and watching the fire’s illumination again. “The one I’m thinking of though is kind of long, though.”

The crowd urged him to say it out loud, suddenly intrigued in Jason’s seemingly opposite side, with practical fears like the dark and his collection of quotes, long and short. Raven couldn’t help but listening in, her mind filling through memories in wonder of what he was thinking.

Not everything is about the two of you, she told herself. He spent five years not acknowledging that you existed.

How could she forget about that last part?

“It’s from an author, actually,” He said, feigning casualty that everyone bought—everyone except one person. “I remember it because I memorized it a while ago—I know, weird.”

Beat. The pace in her heart seemed to stumble a little, her mind pulling her ears to hear what he had to say, her body collapsing into itself, trying to ignore the words coming out of his mouth. What was his reason for fumbling and seeming so nervous?

“‘And now here is my secret,” Jason began.

Raven’s heart stutters.

A very simple secret, her voice in her head echoed his words in synchrony. 

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly,” Jason spoke, and only he was speaking. Only the sound of his words were channeling through Raven’s ears and her wide eyes. The crackling sound of the fire, the light breeze whooshing the leaves of the trees, the slight shifting on log from the children—all of it seemed to numb out and disappear.

What is essential is invisible to the eye.

“What is essential is invisible to the eye,” Jason concluded, and around him, the crowd went silent.

In front of him, Raven stared at him with widened, watery eyes. His childhood friend sat on the wooden log, looking impossibly small and confused, her lips parted and her heartbeat thrumming through the thin, sensitive skin of her chest. Her eyes were begging a question, a question and a million more thoughts accompanying it as she watched him sit.

His hair was almost browning in the glimmering of the amber flames, highlights catching beautifully in every curve and crevice, every fold and smoothly placed strands. His eyes were heavy with an emotion, something impossible to decipher, and impossibly like golden swimming in greens.

He stared at her, and his gaze was purposeful and carrying intent. He knew what he was saying, and she forgot every thought of overreacting. She felt her hand lift to touch her stomach, hoping it would calm the storm of butterflies erupting and swirling.

Between them, the mere stare and the mere reference to a beloved quote from their favorite childhood book seemed loaded. It was a secret language, a veiled whispers, some proof for her that those years had been real and she hadn’t been alone; that the boy with an awfully mischievous and awfully golden smile had been real, and alive, and was feeling every ounce of joy behind those crinkling eyes that she had felt in her young heart.

That he was still remembering, that there was still a light, her light, behind this aged and tired boy. His actions she wouldn’t forgive without reason, but Raven no longer felt doubt about the authenticity of their days, not when Jason Todd was staring at her like he was begging her to hear him.

Just then, the second round was suddenly over, the crowd had mostly dispersed and scattered like dandelion seeds through a lifting breeze with the announcement of dinner, but Raven sat, her eyes unable to leave the comfort of his. For that moment, it felt like she’d found a cave in the middle of a storm, like she was a young girl with a struggling mother who’d just met a bright boy with more understanding in him than anybody else she’d met.

Is that you? She wondered. Is this us?

And then, something else had happened.

Rose had gotten up, pulled him by the leather of his collar, and pressed her lips atop his own. And the moment—the delicate, building moment, had almost shattered, had almost fallen like the building ashes of the dying fire, had almost made Raven feel like she was breathing in the flames.

Almost.

Jason’s eyes widened in surprise, in the whiplash of being struck out of the moment. He’d stared down at her in confusion, before something had settled behind his eyes, and they’d drifted upwards and upwards until—

Until they’d met Raven’s.

His lips, pressed to another woman’s, staring intently and hooded at Raven, with enough heaviness and purpose that it had made her entirely breathless. God, what is he doing? Her brain felt like it had short circuited when she saw the way he was staring.

Raven’s legs began to feel weak and unsteady, her fingers curled until her nails sunk painfully into her fists. Jason had closed his eyes from a fraction of a second, placing a polite hand on Rose’s shoulder, pulling her back.

“What was that about?” He asked, and his voice seemed more quiet than normal. “A warning would’ve been nice.”

What was that about, Jason? The question died in her throat. Her cheeks were burning, and once again, it hadn’t been because of the flames below her.

Rose had laughed, and she nodded over to her friends, who had their palms over their mouths in shock at what she’d done.

“A dare,” She said, laughing casually before patting Jason’s cheek playfully. “Don’t get too serious, Todd.”

She had wandered off, her friends chatting away in shrill voices about how she might fall in love with him, which she had scoffed at in a frisky tone and said he could only dream of it. Despite their loud conversations, however, Raven could barely hear a thing. She felt as though her ears were ringing, and all she could think about was that stare, and his hooded eyes, logged with something that screamed want.

Fuck, she felt like the sound of her heartbeat was loud enough to be heard. But Jason was there, staring at the ground, one hand placed on his waist while the other was on his mouth, staring seriously at the ground like whatever storm was raging on inside him was larger than he’d ever imagined.

Look at me, Raven begged in her mind. Say something.

Instead, her glanced up at her, the momentary return of his glance leaving her speechless, before he quickly turned around and jogged far to where his brothers were standing.

Raven watched his back for a long time, her stomach swirling with something warm and foreign to her. Her mind couldn’t process the scenery around her, could only replay the sight of him kissing with open eyes, open eyes that focused at her.

The trance, however, didn’t last.

“What in the fresh hell did I just witnessed,” Traci said behind her, and Raven jumped. She turned around, looking down at her friend who looked as though there were a hundred thoughts going on inside her head, her expression similar to that of one seeing a ghost.

What it the fresh hell indeed, Raven thought.

When she slept that night to the sound of Traci’s unbearably endless questions, skipping dinner because she was feeling too much swirling around in her chest and stomach, Raven felt and thought of some things that were new to her, conflicting emotions constantly budging the same thoughts over and over again.

Thoughts that she couldn’t stop thinking of.

Were his hands as soft as they’d been before, or had they’d roughen out enough for you to feel when he cradled your cheek? How would they feel on your waist, at the curvature of your neck? And his lips—his lips that she couldn’t get out of her mind—how would they feel encompassed against your own?

She wondered how it felt to be cornered in his broad shoulders, how taller he’d look from that close.

But most painfully recurring of all, she wondered about his eyes, and how it would feel to have them staring at you, his attention focused and undivided—until she realized, she knew what that felt like.

In her storm of her mind switching between thinking ill of Jason Todd and the conflictingly new thoughts of thinking too much about his eyes, his hands and his lips—Raven felt sleep somehow overtake her.

In her dreams, she dreamt of emeralds on that middle school day, staring at her with too much emotion behind them that she’d never caught in the unreliable realm of her memories, staring and staring and looking away.


	3. You Alone Will Have The Stars

Something seems to be ringing somewhere within her dream, and it sounds distant enough that it gets her searching for the sound, wondering if it's in the depths of the drawers or below the ocean, all to no avail.

There’s a soft nudge at her waist, and she feels it like something red blooming there, until the ringing becomes louder slowly and suddenly the nudging digs too deep, waking her up and simultaneously knocking the air from her lungs.

Raven gasps when she awakes, in the middle of the awkwardly silent camp meeting. For a few seconds, she looks around, confused, before remembering how she’d been in the middle of listening to a counselor speak of the bake sale that they were planning to begin tomorrow morning and ready for tonight.

God, I’ve really not been getting enough sleep lately, she realized before she notices the ringing once more—her phone is buzzing furiously in the burrow of her pockets and Kory looks slightly concerned by how hard she nudged her in the ribs.

Raven quickly excuses herself and leaves the cabin, before rushing over to a few trees. She digs out her phone from her coat pocket, blinking the sleep from her eyes and tries to focus on the number.

Mom.

Raven’s heart sinks, but she gives herself no time to think, and quickly swipes the accept button.

“Hello?” Raven immediately questions, and her head moves onto a thousand possibilities on why her mother decided to call her more than a month into camp. “Mom? Hello—“

There’s a sigh on the other side of the line.

“Raven,” Her mother says, and she sounds awfully tired. There’s a pause, and no drag of a cigarette or a smoky exhale or anything of the kind. “Had a bad dream, kid.”

Raven hums, still confused out of her mind.

“Oh,” She says lamely, cupping the phone with both hands. “Is—are you alright? Do you want to talk about it?”

There’s silence again.

“I had a bad dream about you. ” Her mother says. She sounds more alert and alive than Raven has ever heard her. 

Raven doesn’t know what to say; she doesn’t know what she means.

“Someone told me a long time ago that lessons are better taught through experience and not through words,” She says, sighing. “But I think you’re smart enough.”

Raven hums again.

“You’ve got to live a life that you’re proud of, you know?” Arella says, and Raven momentarily wonders if she’s entirely sober. “Too many regrets means too many mistakes and too many of those will end you up like me.”

Her mother’s voice cracks, the tone watery and uneven. For some reason, she had never told her anything like this all throughout her childhood; every lesson that Raven learned was by being a careful observer to everybody else’s stumbles and recoveries. Some times, Raven had watched the nighttime sky outside her window and wondered how it’d feel like to spend these few hours talking about things with her mother; those hours that were too early to sleep during, but too late and tiring to do much of anything else productive.

Some days, her mother would approach her and give her a small embrace, and as she grew up, Raven understood that that was supposed to be some kind of apology. But the truth was, it was lame and careless. She began nearly hating the kind act; it was an apology hidden and unspoken, and she didn’t believe in apologies that weren’t loud and profound.

But, somehow, she hated hearing her talk lowly of herself. Perhaps it was because it reminded her so much of herself, and she realized how broken the two of them truly were.

“Raven,” Her mother said, and it sounded like she was exhausted; like she was seconds away from falling asleep. “When you find something worthy of loving, hold onto that.”

“How do you know something is worthy of loving, mom?” Raven asked, feeling like her voice was speaking for itself.

Once again, quietness took over the line and there was nothing to be heard but her mother’s sleepy breathing pattern. After a while, Raven wondered if she’d fallen into a slumber.

“When you think of it in all of its entirety, in the way it affects you and the world, and you don’t feel any malice in your heart,” She said. “When it’s something that is true and open and all the answers you have are the only answers out there; that’s when something is worthy of loving.”

The silence that overtook Raven and kept her pinned to her spot as she tried to process what her mother told her was deafening. Even after Arella’s quiet words of parting and her own reply and even after the sound of the call ending, Raven still felt like she didn’t really know what was happening.

Where did this come from? Had she been thinking about her father recently? How come her mother never spoke to her like this before? For some reason, Raven wanted to cry, if the lump in her throat was speaking any truth. After a long while, she took the phone from her ear and stared at it for long enough for the sunshine to return from in between the clouds.

-

The cake ingredients were everywhere.

Jason knew they should’ve opted for a simple box cake recipe considering their strictly tight schedule, but as expected, everyone had preferred authenticity and originality. As he looked around at his family tearing one another apart, it was clear that they’d forgotten all of their comments.

“Why would you put in four eggs, Drake?” Damian said, pulling at his hair in frustration.

“Because you told me to crack in four eggs,” Tim shouted in aggravation, hands pressed against the temples of his head before pointing at Dick. “Forget it, it’s fixable. But what are we going to do about the damned frosting?”

“What are you talking about? I’m making the frosting!” Dick said, offense ringing through his voice as he tried to stir the mixture with a spoon and the sheer force of his arm. “There’s no point to be running through grocery markets miles away if you can make some delicious homemade frosting—“

“Sure, but we don’t have enough confectioner’s sugar, dammit,” Tim said, and Damian began banging his head against the cabinets. 

“You can’t make frosting with granulated sugar and a spoon alone, you royal dumbass!” Damian shouted.

“Forget the frosting, we could ask another group to make a batch,” Stephanie shouted between the three of them, Duke and Cassandra quickly agreeing. “But what the hell are we going to do about the burning cookies?”

“The what?!” Dick, Tim and Damian screamed simultaneously while whipping their heads around in horror to watch the smoking oven behind them.

Jason immediately turned around and left their cabin, relief washing over him when the fresh nighttime breeze enveloped him and cleaned the panic from his lungs. From the warmth inside, the colder outside air felt unbelievably refreshing and calming, the sounds of other campers running around, chattering and giggling ringing through camp.

He stared at the nighttime sky and the fullness of the pearly moon, it’s familiar grey patches delicately formed and clear from where he stood. Jason closed his eyes, and just as it has consistently been for the past week, he could only see her face behind his eyelids.

That timid, flushed face in the basking orange of the firelight. Pink lips parted in shock, lavender eyes widened in being caught off guard. He tried to burn that memory into his mind, enough to keep replaying it every night since then, in hopes that he would figure out what she was thinking if he resisted that moment enough.

Whatever it was he had been thinking—Jason wasn’t aware, for it had been purely on instinct. But he felt too hot all over by the time it was over and his heartbeat wasn’t calming down with every stretching second in her presence. He hadn’t even ran to his brothers, just made some excuses and then proceeded to take the coldest shower of his life.

The cold had stung, and everything felt right. At the same time, everything felt so unbelievably wrong and he’d been sulking in worry over whether or not he had freaked her out for good. These kinds of emotions—it wasn’t something he was used to feeling. Not because it was impossible, but because he had repressed them for forever.

Some nights he had entirely forgotten what had happened before that kiss that caught him off guard. That was something he’d rather not remember, as he couldn’t help but feel ridiculously embarrassed whenever he heard the sound of his voice reciting a quote from that book loud enough for everyone to hear—for her to hear.

What kind of stupid questionnaire had that been, anyway? All he’d done was make a fool out of himself, surely. It was almost selfish that he’d said it.

The past week had been painfully tense between the two of them, the mere lock of gazes that they had across the lunch tables or during the camp activities were far too intense and would keep him distracted on her frame and her face and her everything for the rest of whatever they’d be doing.

He’d done well not looking up whenever she’d been around in previous years—or else he’d surely suffer the way he was now each time he stared at her with a million unsaid words, with a million reasons to feel guilty for feeling heavy and warm.

God, she was surely going to end him by the time the camp was over. But even that thought pained him above anything else; as it would be their last year here as students. Surely many were already thinking of taking gap years to become counselor assistants as nobody seemed to have everything figured out yet.

But still, he had no clue as to whether or not he’d ever see her again, and it’d really hit him how uncomfortable that thought made him.

Jason shook his head, getting rid of those kinds of thoughts. He heard the shrill voices of her friends from their cabin, and began walking towards it, sneakers crushing the wet grass below him. They did need some confectioner’s sugar, after all, but Jason knew that was just an excuse to finally see her. He’d tried to not make a fool out of himself for a week, but the moon hung high and his brain wasn’t thinking right anymore.

He knocked on the door, and a powder nosed Zatanna opened it, certainly not expecting him. She blinked, shifted and laughed awkwardly, all while looking back at the other girls and welcoming him in. In that moment, Jason started to feel a wave of nervousness come over him, wondering what exactly he was doing here, and why it was becoming harder and harder to resist.

“We’ve got company,” Zatanna said, pointing a thumb back at him while she walked over to the station—clean and organized with pretty colored bowls and some flour sifted on their aprons and food coloring tinting their fingers. It was a light, bubbly atmosphere—completely different from the chaos back at his cabin.

Jason wasn’t going to look at Raven, as it felt almost insolent considering all the history between them, but without realizing, his eyes sought out her figure. She was wrapped in a white apron atop her long sleeved black shirt and leggings. Her hair was put up into a messy bun, a few strands elegantly falling down onto her shoulders. She looked, in all the flour dusted atop her and the chocolate frosting streaked thinly on her cheek, really cute—focusing on layering the brownie batter into the pan and certainly not staring up at him.

Was there a blush at her cheeks? He almost slapped himself at the thought. Selfish, he thought. 

His fingers almost twitched with the want to tuck the loose hairs behind her ear. All of this—every single thought and urge was setting him over the edge. He was used to a faster, more sharper life, seemingly free of these kinds of feelings, but something inside him always knew that no amount of facade could ignore what would present itself in a blinding spotlight during the night hours when he couldn’t sleep.

“What brings Jason Todd here?” Kory asked tilting a head as she opened the oven for Raven to place the pan into. “All by himself, too?”

“Yup, it’s just me,” Jason said, smirking. “Dick is all the way back in our cabin screwing up our frosting, if you wanted to know.”

The girls gave Kory a cheeky glance who rolled her eyes despite the smile at her lips.

“I didn’t want to know, actually” Kory said as a matter-of-factly.

“Silly me—I thought you would. Did you also not want to know that we need some extra confectioner’s sugar? And that he’d be delighted to see you swoop in to save the day by sparing a cup or two?”

The girls immediately pushed her to the door, a cup of sugar in hand, talking to her in whispers. Despite her weak protests, they shut the door behind her, closing the window blinds and falling into fits of laughter and excitement.

“I swear there’s about a million different scenarios I can think of that could happen,” Traci said, eagerly.

“I’m sure she’s expecting something very different,” Jason spoke up to say. “But the poor bastard looks like he’s been through a car wash gone wrong. He’s nearly more butter and flour than skin by now.”

Jason heard Raven give a quiet, breathy laughter that was barely audible but had him glancing over at her nonetheless.

All the girls groaned and laughed, pitying their friend and wishing someone had gone to record that awkward interaction. Before long, they resumed their spots in their stations and fell into an easy conversation.

Jason should’ve left by then, but Raven was suddenly close to him at the counter top, reaching to open up a cabinet. If he had leaned a little closer, their arms would be touching. He looked at her slim arm reaching for the door, eyes searching for whatever she was looking for. He watched her, shamelessly, because though the act was more or less innocent, it didn’t feel that way to him.

Eventually, she caught his stare, and Jason could only swallow the heartbeat hammering in his throat. His eyes quickly looked back at her arm, moving slowly against the black fabric until he saw what she was trying to reach for in the cabinet behind him.

His eyes returned to her, reaching for the jar of cocoa powder without breaking their stare. She took it from him quietly, and it wasn’t until then that they’d noticed how everyone had left. The finished desserts were gone as well, so they must’ve left to put them away where they were assigned to.

Raven quickly turned around, going back to her table, her back towards him. He let go of a breath he didn’t know he was holding, but one glance back at her did Jason realize that she was simple staring at the ingredients before her, not doing anything in particular to get started.

She looked over her shoulder and stared at Jason intently, leaving him wondering if he’d done anything.

“Are you just going to stand there or will you make yourself of some use?” She said, nodding over to the ingredients before her.

Huh? Jason didn’t know if he heard that right. He opened his mouth to say something, but all that came out was silence.

“Tongue tied, aren’t we?” Raven said, smirking to herself. Jason’s mouth suddenly went dry, completely unaware if she was annoyed or teasing him. He blinked, and suddenly the tension in the room was something he felt like he was relishing in. “Guess I can’t expect you to be smooth in every situation, huh?”

Was that a reference to what happened that night a week ago?

“Don’t fall so quickly to conclusions,” Jason said, walking over to her slowly, suddenly feeling something come alive in his chest—something rosy and light. “Those brownies looked delicious—I’m sure you’d be an excellent teacher.”

Raven smiled reluctantly, and Jason felt lighter than he had in a long time. He really needed to keep that small tug of her lips growing for as long as he could.

“I’m sure I would be,” Raven said, looking at the labels on the jars and boxes scattered before her. “I’m just not positive that you’d be an excellent learner, however. These cupcakes need to guarantee satisfaction, you know.”

She furrowed her brows in a false sense of seriousness, before beginning to measure out the dry ingredients.

“No worries,” He said, watching every measurement carefully before doing the same actions as her. “Give me the night and I could guarantee satisfaction. A little birdie told me that I’m a fast learner, you know.”

Ah, there it was. The moment during few of his interactions with Raven that made him want to strangle himself with his bare hands. Jason’s ears bloomed red to their tips, Raven’s lips parting as she tried to distract herself with the measurements. Were they shaking? God, he needed to be careful with what he was saying.

If this was anyone else, he’d have left the line hanging as he was and stood with every ounce of smugness in his body, but in that scenario, Jason knew he’d only feel nothing behind the words except an emptiness. Somehow, with Raven, being red and awkward felt like he was feeling something, and that was rather terrifying to him.

“The cupcakes,” Jason blurted out.

Raven looked up at him. Her face was a little pink, but a single eyebrow was raised—testing him.

“An entire night to guarantee satisfaction. That’s kind of lame, isn’t it?” Raven said, scoffing. “That little birdie is a filthy liar. Emphasis on the filthy part.”

Jason couldn’t help but groan at his own miserable situation, facepalming. His reaction seemed to yank laughter from Raven’s lips, though, and she covered her mouth timidly. He tried to keep his reaction going to pretend the sound of his laughter didn’t shake him, but it had and it became painfully obvious when she kept stifling her little giggles and he kept watching her, and watching her and watching her, a genuine smile on his lips. He really, truly had missed this sight.

“That was awful enough to wince at,” Raven said, mixing the various flours together. “Don’t tell me this is the enrapturing charm I’ve heard about.”

Jason groaned even louder at her words, burying his face in his hands and pulling his hoodie over himself. Her laughter was louder now, more unguarded and this was absolutely insane. The tension was there, but it felt like it manifested into a different form, and above all was a cloud of easiness. It was like their minds and bodies knew how to speak, how to bask in this instinctive link between them. Strangely, he could feel his heart hurt. He couldn’t decipher whether it was a good kind of hurt or bad.

“Please do enlighten me on who described me as having an enrapturing charm,” He said, voice strained as he tried not to smile from her laughter.

“The little birdie, I suppose,” Raven said cheekily.

That made him laugh loudly, until his chest felt heavy and he could feel his vision nearly blurring. The sounds of the two of their laughter was melodious through the wooden walls of the small cabin, Raven trying to stifle herself which only made it worse and Jason ended up laughing hard enough to not make a noise when she accidentally threw over the carton of cream.

In the sound, there was an echoing backing track, younger voices and older days but the same type of giggles in their own little bubble. For just that moment, things no longer felt like there was tar on the outlines of all their interactions and bitter things unsaid. 

“I knew everything was going too well,” Raven said at the spilled cream all over the cabin floor.

In the midst of it, Jason had a sudden urge. He scooped some flour from an extra bowl and threw it in her direction, earning her gawking and appalled faces.

“You can’t have a baking session without at least one flour fight,” He said, shrugging. The adrenaline in his blood was pumping.

“Oh, really?” Raven challenged him, and Jason decided he was really obsessed with that face. She gathered some of the cocoa powder in her hands and threw it back at him, piercing through his thoughts.

Jason gasped, looking down at his hoodie, covered with cocoa powder. Raven found this unbelievably amusing, so Jason was inches away from grabbing another fistful before they heard the girls walking back in.

They froze. The feeling froze. The tension froze. All they could do was stare at the alarmed faces before them.

“Well, that’s something I thought I’d never see,” Traci said, her face twisting into a mischievous smirk. “Actually, considering what I have seen, I guess I should’ve expected this.”

Shit.

Jason knew what she was talking about, and he was uncomfortable aware of how much he must’ve been blushing. He stood there, by the counter, ears going pink striped of his will, covered in cocoa powder. He didn’t dare risk a glance at Raven, as it seemed that everything was broken. Suddenly, it was as if they were both replaying the moment in their heads, and Jason felt like a fool for letting himself get completely carried away and lost in the moment.

Rose’s mouth was pressed onto his, but he didn’t remember the feeling. All he could remember, however, was the pink tint of Raven’s limps and her impossibly wide eyes. He’d done it on complete instinct, and couldn’t look away once their gazes locked.

He thought to himself something once more; What had he been thinking? And more so, what had he been thinking just now?

For some reason, whatever lightness there was, whatever clouds had been uplifting the atmosphere, seemed to become heavy. They filled up with water, turning grey and hefty, looming over the two of them.

How could he have forgotten why the easiness between them existed in the first place? It had been like reading a tense part of some novel, only to flip back to the first pages where everything was new and light. But he was past that, they were past that now.

How could he have forgotten that he had completely left everything with her so cruelly and allow himself to sink into the short cloud of her presence? Why had he come here in the first place?

He was spiraling again and damn, he felt like an absolute fool.

“Uh, I should get going,” Jason said, awkwardly, shuffling where he stood. He needed to leave immediately, glancing over at Raven quickly. “Sorry about that.”

His eyes barely had time to register the expression on her face, but he was positive that it was similar to his own.

As he quickly left, the sound of his hurrying footsteps was the only thing he could hear in deafening silence of the cabin besides the rather loud shroud he suddenly felt above his chest and the thousands of memories painfully flowing through his mind.

-

Raven needed answers.

If she was painfully honest, she’s always needed answers, but she’s never wanted to be the one to succumb to the situation and make it clear that she cared. For years, Raven had believed that Jason was simply a poorly built person and she refused to make herself feel smaller than him.

However, tonight had been different, and in their few and short-lived interactions, Raven couldn’t help but feel like she was missing something, and the mere fact made her feel as though she’d lose her mind if she wouldn’t receive the full story right then and there.

Raven was angry, and all throughout their interactions, including the warmer ones they had experienced a few hours prior, a shadow of that frustration still thrived behind every passing second. And yet, despite being angry with him, there was a sense of longing that she couldn’t get rid of, a need for closure in any of it’s endless forms that she kept yearning for. Perhaps that was what had caused her to start a conversation, perhaps that was what had allowed herself to kick down her walls for those few moments.

Was she longing for a person or the memory of them? That was a question she couldn’t answer, but one thing was for certain; she never was truly over his warm presence, all because of the silence between them for five passing years.

And so, Raven had ignored every question her friends had and had eventually gotten up to walk over to his cabin. When the figure of him sitting on top of the short, creaky staircase came into view within the darkness of midnight, though, Raven had looked down and focused on the pressing grass beneath her feet as she walked.

She wouldn’t back down from this. She needed answers. She couldn’t stand what she was feeling any longer, and Raven was afraid of allowing herself to do what she’d been holding back from; either something stormy demanding the full explanation right then and there or something soft like adjusting a single strand in his hair.

Her face still burned when she thought of that kiss and that stare as well. Her cool hand reached over to her cheek and contrasting temperatures made a shiver run down her spine.

When Raven approached closer quietly, though, she came to realize that he hadn’t simply been sitting, but fallen asleep with his head leaning on the wooden railing as well.

Raven walked a little closer, all the intent inside of her suddenly deflating as she saw his peaceful, sleeping face. His black eyelashes fanned across his cheeks, eyelids slightly closed and gently closed. A few strands of hair was beautifully fallen onto his face, eyebrows ever so slightly pinching downwards.

Raven found herself smiling at the tranquility that seemed to circle around him, but she couldn’t shake the sadness and frustration that she felt at the same time.

Suddenly, she heard something come from Jason. It sounded like he was stirring in his sleep, starting with a small exhale before his brows furrowed further. Raven suddenly felt out of place, wondering what she’d say or do if he awoke. Before she could leave, however, Jason stirred further and his expression twisted into a frown for a few moments before a bead of sweat dripped down his temple.

Was he having a nightmare?

Raven suddenly felt concerned. She walked over quickly, seeing the small lines of distress between his eyebrows and the squeeze of his eyelids screamed discomfort. Her hand lifted to feel his forehead, gasping at the coolness of it as she walked to sit close to him.

“Jason?” She whispered quietly, looking back into his cabin. It seemed as though everyone inside had fallen asleep, the only company being the weak yellow light on the outside walls, barely illuminating the two of them. She looked back over to Jason, who was making a few noises that seemed like he was wincing, desperate to try and escape whatever he was seeing. “Jason, wake up.”

Raven touched his shoulder, squeezing slightly. It only seemed to get worse when she realized that Jason’s breathing had become ragged, his chest rising up and down in what looked like sheer panic. Raven felt herself beginning to panic as well at the sight.

She reached for his other shoulder, shaking him a few times until suddenly his eyes snapped wide open. They looked like a deer in the headlights, pupils blown in surprise. Raven touched his face lightly, feeling her own heartbeat racing.

“Hey, hey,” She said quietly, turning his face until she could stare into his terrified and confused eyes. “You were having a nightmare, you’re okay now.”

Jason looked at her, trying to catch her breath in the circle of her comforting and gentle words. Images from his nightmare kept flashing through his head, fleeting ever so slightly with every second he spent trying to decipher the shades of purple in her eyes. It felt like his lungs were small and he needed more air than they could fit.

But she was here, small hands and soft thumbs brushing his cheeks, whispering comforting things that he could hear better as the ringing in his ears faded away. He felt like whatever had been stirring in his chest had reached its breaking point, and everything in him wanted to scream in the middle of the campsite or let the burning in his eyes to blur over his eyes and let it fall as tears onto his cheeks.

Jason was tired of being strong, but the exhaustion was nothing compared to the shame he felt. He was sitting here, being comforted by the same girl he had cut off out of nowhere, the same one who’s gaze he had ignored, all while thinking he was doing something necessary for the two of them. Despite it all, she had sat here, with memories of the two children finding something special between them still in her mind, with memories of him being an absolute asshole and tearing everything between them apart, still comforting him over this embarrassingly timed nightmare.

He felt rather guilty, but he nevertheless leaned into her touch. The heat of her comfort was addicting. The proximity felt familiar and bold, almost too much to intake after everything.

Raven felt…odd.

She understood this feeling far too well, understood him far too well to pretend as though she didn’t. He may have changed in several ways since being thirteen years of age, but there were his personality always seemed more real and open in the five years they spent together than the five they hadn’t.

Raven didn’t think he wanted to speak about whatever he’d seen.

All she could do was hold his gripping hand, and throughout it all, she couldn’t help but feel as though she was the one being comforted. The two of them felt drunk on the sudden closeness, on the moment they’d just shared, and were focused intently on the pattern of each other’s breathing.

In the morning, Raven found herself in the comfort of her own bed, tucked in with two blankets. When she opened her bleary eyelids, she realized that beside her was a note, a scene that reminded her of another one in the form of a memory. On it was a simple, scrawled, two word sentence. It was stripped of any signature, but she didn’t need one to know who’d written it.

Thank you.

-  
The first time he’d seen her, he was too young to find girls pretty or get nervous around them. Instead, he’d found himself being interested in her silence, a trait that built the foundation of her character being starkly different from his own loudness.

She’d been in a simple, comfortable outfit with a single friend who wore glittery tops with ruffled skirts and was likable by everyone at the camp. Raven, however, wasn’t regarded most of the time, and whenever she was, everyone seemed to find her creepy or strange—even from that young of an age.

Jason, however, looked at her at eight years old and thought she and him were similar immediately in the odd one out sense of being. When he’d seen her piling books in her arms at the small makeshift library on the third day of camp, he’d immediately felt something bright inside of him, wondering what kind of books she read.

A few weeks into camp, she’d asked him a question when she’d caught him smuggling small snacks for the birds in the forest. He’d look back at her, and couldn’t help the smile taking over his face.

She hadn’t teased him or told anybody, but only offered a kind and gentle presence. For some reason, he immediately felt more comfortable around her than anybody else; and it surprised him to no end.

He’d make up stupid jokes and perform the most idiotic stunts in order to get her laugh, and sometimes she would, and other times she’d chastise him for not being careful. He remembered falling into a stream one year and scraping his knee, and despite his reluctance, she’d quickly taken out a bandage and carefully swiped it on. Jason had looked at her and wondered why she cared, but then she’d hurt her arm on a sharp twig, and he’d quickly done the same for her.

“You’re clumsier than I thought,” He had said, struggling with opening the bandage.

“Jason, there’s no blood,” Raven said, giggling into her hands. 

“It must be because of all this hair,” Jason said, ignoring what she said, and had tucked the hair falling into her face behind her ear.

He hadn’t known what it was he was feeling, but he would, eventually.

Jason remembered having several days where he simply couldn’t bear to speak. He was afraid of saying something he didn’t mean, and that was a first for him. The anger boiling inside his blood and building up inside of him seemed unbearable, and he’d often find himself wanting to punch at the barks of his trees. Raven had always told him to let himself feel, but he’d always argue against it and would insist he was fine.

Their favorite thing to do, without a doubt, was reading—and one book in particular. Jason didn’t know what had been so interesting about the story that kept him hooked, and long wondered if it was the story at all. Perhaps it had just been the starry eyed look that Raven had.

It wasn’t a look she had on often when she was around anybody else, and that alone made him feel happy inside. It was unbelievable that he, of all people, had been a safe space to somebody, and somebody like Raven as well—innocent, caring and mature for her age Raven that always made him feel something he didn’t understand.

He’d understand it soon enough, however.

Nearly every other boy at thirteen years of age was constantly talking about the girl students at his school, how they smelled pretty and how they looked nice when they played with their hair. They’d talk about how shy and awkward they’d felt around them, and it was obviously true that the girls had looked prettier since he’d grown up but something felt off.

Jason didn’t realize what it was until he came to camp that year, feeling a million different emotions and only one seemed to stand out. In the dark of the night, when Raven leaned her head onto his shoulder comfortably, he couldn’t stop the race of his heartbeat. She did smell pretty, and he found herself asking her to explain the most minute quotes so he could stare into her eyes instead. He should’ve felt uncomfortable with his cheeks burning every time she laughed or smiled, but he didn’t.

What was strange was that with every other girl, talking was easier. His brothers teased him endlessly out of how easily he could sneak in some cheeky remark, but he found himself more tongue tied with Raven.

She was his friend. They were best friends. It couldn’t have been possible that he was feeling like that for his own friend, right?

He’d done something he normally would never do, but the desperation drove him to his brother.

“I have a question,” Jason said when Dick and him had been left alone in their room. “How do you know if you like someone?”

Dick had looked at him strangely, almost as if he was considering teasing him, but had instead decided to be a proper older brother and took in a deep breath.

“I think you just know,” Dick had said. “You look at them and you feel something different than what you feel for anybody else.”

A special person.

She was his special person, and being around her felt too easy to be true. She would look at him and the bad things would feel a little bit less serious than they seemed, and naturally his shoulders would be weightless. Raven rarely smiled to others, but when she’d smile in the brilliant way she would, he would instantly want to get closer. He found himself reaching for her hand more times than one. He found himself smiling at night thinking about her.

So, it was an undeniable truth—he had feelings for her. And more undeniable than that, he loved her.

Of course he loved her.

Even if he’d only see her for only four months in person. Even if they spent the other eight speaking through letters. Even if he was eight, or nine, or ten, eleven, twelve or thirteen. Even if he was too young and “didn’t understand” what love was.

He loved her, even before he knew that that was what he was feeling.

And he loved her when he tore it apart, and he loved her from afar for every year after that, and he hadn’t spent a second not loving her. 

Even when he’d tried to convince himself he hadn’t. Especially then. 

Jason Todd had always known that growing up was supposed to be difficult. It was a concept that had always been shoved in his face in one way or another. But he hadn’t truly understood why or how. He’d always just felt like it couldn’t do much to hurt him.

He’d grown up on the streets, and he’d forgotten a lot of people. He’d been fighting for as long as he could remember, always holding too much anger to the city and the people in it. Even when Bruce had saved him, he’d still been fighting. Pretending like the words the kids used to call him didn’t affect him, pretending like he didn’t hate leaving the bullies who cornered him in bruises because it only proved their points. Jason just hadn’t known how it could’ve been worse than that.

“I heard that you had an altercation with a child named Jack Napier at school,” Bruce had told him once after school at the dinner table. “He has a broken jaw, Jason.”

“It’s not my fault that he keeps asking for it every single day,” Jason said. He’d pretended to be casual about it all, in sheer hope that Bruce would get it and he’d show up at school. Maybe that would teach them that Bruce Wayne always defended his kids—no matter the background that they came from. “You should hear the things he’s been calling me since the first fucking day of school.”

Bruce was silent for a moment, studying his character. Jason knew that the gears in his mind were shifting, understanding.

But then.

“Language,” Bruce had said. “And you should have informed me about this on the first day of school. Beating another child up until he’s broken something isn’t the way to do things.”

“This is coming from the part time detective with an infamously short temper, huh?” Jason had spat back. “Of course you’re gonna find a way to blame it on me.”

“You are not a part time detective, you’re a child,” Bruce had retorted. “I’m not blaming you at all. In fact, I’ll be having a meeting with his parents—“

“If he wants to talk shit, he’s going to get what’s in store for him,” Jason interrupted. “How about you go and be a hypocrite somewhere else. I don’t need you to attend a stupid meeting.”

“Jason,” Bruce said firmly, all tension and annoyance swirling around him. “Please don’t misunderstand. You know I wouldn’t blame you for something like this. I just think you need to—“

“Piss off, Bruce,” Jason shouted. “I know the teachers have been on your tail about me for a long damn time. You just can’t be bothered.”

Bruce was a good father figure, and he was getting better at being a father these days. But before now, he’d been too distant to see how his son was suffering—now that he’d grown up a little to the age of twelve and was starting to wonder why he suffered the way he did as a child. He always kept his emotions sealed tightly in a bottle, and lived by that. It always had caused far too many intense outbursts and tension between the two of them.

Because the truth was, whatever Bruce seemed to feel was bottled up inside. Almost spilling, almost breaking, on a constant edge—but still kept inside. And Jason felt too much, enough for it to be impossible to keep in. Too easy to let out.

He’d stormed out of the room, ignoring Bruce’s shouts, and had slammed his door shut. When he’d stared out the window that night, his breathing was too heavy, too easy to hear. His eyes were burning, hands balled into fists. He’d looked out of the massive window in his room, and saw the branches of trees, wishing he was somewhere else with someone else who always knew what to do.

Jason would observe the truth of the boys in their family. He’d look at Dick, who came from a tragic past but a loving family and good friends from the circus. He’d look at Tim, who went through something awful but came from a loving family who supported him. He looked at Damian, who hadn’t had a perfect relationship with his mother but who knew she loved him nonetheless; as did his father.

But Jason—Jason never really knew what that was like. He thought he knew two things though; His father whom he loved left the family because he was a damaged man not wanting to spoil his son's life. His mother whom he loved died from an illness after overworking herself for him.

And as the years passed on the streets, Jason kept repeating those things to himself. He’d always wondered when he’d stopped believing it without knowing, and started clinging onto it just for the sake of sanity.

That night after their outburst, at only twelve years old in April and the thick of their school year, there were only two things on his mind.

One, she kept a lot of things inside too, but she felt too much at the same time like him. She understood him, and knew how to let him speak and rant into the midnight sky. She’d stay quiet and then speak, giving away words that seemed far too wise for a child to say.

Two, he began to wonder where the man was whom he shared his DNA with. And if he truly was just a despicable loser, if his mother was somewhere too, alive and waiting.

But then he’d found out the truth nearly a year later, and that was the end of that. 

A heated argument with Bruce revealed to him the truth about his father; another empty criminal who chose robbing banks over his family.

And in that altercation that same year, the one that was polluted with contracts and agreements to convince the public the story hadn’t been as filthy as it truly was; Jason found the face behind the shadow of his mother in his mind without even seeing her once.

An even emptier woman, hiring faceless men to abduct her own flesh and blood, to hold him hostage for Bruce because of a political dispute. The kind but fragile and ill-stricken mother he imagined, the one who shared his eyes and his smile in his mind, was a horrific monster who’s blue eyes looked dull and dead and pale, and whose smile was deranged.

He had run straight into his bedroom, sat on the edge of his bed and stared at the body mirror before him—kept staring and staring and thought to himself why.

Although all the anger rushing through his blood was directed straight at those people who were supposedly his parents, at the twisted faced bullies at school, at the rumors, the insecurity and feelings of being an outcast—he knew deep inside that it was himself he hated more than anyone.

Even those who could have stopped it, he wouldn’t allow. He was burning the path he was walking on.

And burning everyone else, too.

Before Jason can think far into it and remember the details of everything, he realizes that the skin at the sides of his eyes are wet. When he blinks, salty beads of tears slip through his eyelids, blurring the vision of his ceiling momentarily.

And this—this is what he despises most of all. This is the feeling that he cannot stand, cannot stomach. Every time it fades, it never really goes away, as it always leaves him with a ghost of itself—a fear that he’ll feel it again.

This feeling is like getting good news on a tiring day, only for the good to become inexplicably bad. It’s the urge to want to see the sunshine after months in the shadows of your room, only to see a grey rainfall by the time you’ve stepped outside. It’s the feeling when you’ve felt peace again by being in the presence of somebody who knows you all too well, only to realize the reasons why you didn’t speak for five years all over again.

It’s a flicker of hope, only a flicker, that you crave after, you starve after. You feel it, and it embodies you, and then there’s a harsh burn of reality, and you realize that it must be temporary and fleeting.

He was doing better.

For the past year, Jason’s been learning to do better. But there’s ghosts he’s been holding onto for far too long, and then there’s his hatred for feeling his own vulnerability. And of course, a person cannot fix all the internal issues causing storms inside of you, but they can help you.

And sometimes, that person is a woman with beautiful eyes and a lovely smile—with a sarcastic streak that he finds most amusing in the contrast of her quiet, mysterious nature. It’s a woman who’s grown up in a broken home like his own, who’s seen too much and felt too much ever since she had been small. It’s a person, above all, who feels like safety when you’re close to them. A person who doesn’t need to be your friend, or your family, or your something more—just a person who you want around.

And she’s somebody you can’t have, Jason thinks to himself. Because you were too afraid of everything, and still are today. Even when you’re doing better, you hold onto those fears.

And what exactly are those fears?

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Three firm knocks at the door. Jason almost gasps when he hears them, jumping from his bed. The towel that dried his wet hair from the shower falls unpleasantly on his back, the cold water dripping down his spine. It seems to be a sharp yank from his thoughts and into reality.

“Fuck,” He curses, and takes off the towel, setting it on the bunkbed’s railings. He gives his white shirt a little tug absentmindedly as he walks over to the door and opens it.

Tim Drake is far too eager to slink through the barely there crack in the door and immediately rush to his bed, ransacking the thing apart.

There’s pillows and books flying everywhere, sheets of paper floating all through the room. One of the books nearly smacks Jason in the face, who still feels bleary eyed and delicate.

“Hey, hey,” Jason yells through the nonsense, catching a pillow in the air before it knocks him over.

“This cannot be happening,” Tim says, grabbing at everything he threw apart to reassemble it on the security of his bed just as chaotically. “I’ve got to prove Ms. Rivers wrong, I swear she told our group to make vanilla cake, not chocolate brownies! She’s threatening to kick our team out.”

Jason stares at him, and then looks at the clock that reads noon. The bake sale is opens in thirty minutes, and he’s been sulking in his bed. What is worse was that he had promised everyone that he’d be there early to help set up.

Of course, that was before he had gone to Raven’s cabin and everything had spiraled down from there. When he remembers her, he almost finds himself staring off into space again before the memory of chocolate brownies hits him.

“She wrote it down on a stupid piece of paper,” Tim said, checking the pillow casings. “I swear she’s just blaming me because she knows she’s messed up—“

“Tim,” Jason said, taking his brother’s shoulders in his hand and turning around the few inches over five feet of pure, jittery energy. “You’re right. I saw another group making the brownies last night.”

“Really? Who?” Tim asks quickly one after the other, and his phone starts buzzing with Dick’s name blaring up at him. “Actually, can you go tell them to confirm with Ms. Rivers? I really need to take this—“

“No,” Jason dismisses it immediately and starts walking over to find some new clothes to wear from his suitcase. He cannot risk a chance to get that close again, not when his heart has finally caught up to his brain. He has to keep his distance. It’ll be easy. He’ll know what to do. It’ll be easy. It’ll be easy.

“What?” Tim squawks at him, and then gives an annoyed groan and rushes out of the room with his phone to his ear before he runs back to peek his head into their cabin. “It’s gonna start in a bit, hurry up!”

Damn, Jason thinks, sighing. It’s just a goddamn bake sale.

-

The bake sale finishes up all too well. The invited customers come and go, the teams rally up the amount of goods they’ve sold and it nearly ends up in a tie.

At the end of it all, it’s Raven’s brownies that sell more than their vanilla cakes and cookies, and that alone is shocking enough. If he was being honest, Jason was truly expecting his team to be last place considering the mess and commotion that happening during baking.

Raven smirks when she hears their team’s name being called, and his brothers look completely devastated. It’s slightly pathetic, but it makes Raven bite at her smile as she looks at the ridiculous sight before her, and therefore it almost makes Jason smile, too.

Almost.

He looks at his shoes as he hears her teammates congratulate each other, giving her words of appreciation and overall an atmosphere of happiness seems to be radiating from their general direction. But despite it all, Jason can feel her stare.

She’d been eyeing him worriedly all throughout the bake sale, and justifiably so considering his embarrassing breakdown after his nightmare. He tries looking away, but every tinge of confusion on her face makes it harder, and so he decides to not be as awful as last time.

He looked at her once, and forced a smile on his face with a thumbs up to get the point across. Jason knows she sees right through him, but she nods nonetheless with a similarly forced smile and looked away.

Several times throughout the sale did he catch himself watching her and looked away, feeling his chest grow that much heavier. Several times did her pass by her table, finding excuses every single time because the butterflies in his stomach made him feel something other than the damper mood he’d been drowning in.

Tim had obviously noticed, as he always does, and demanded an answer. He’d even asked whether the rumors around camp, the ones about him and Rose “breaking up” were legitimate and Jason looked at him like he had spawned into a ghost.

The truth was, they weren’t really a thing. They’d kissed a few times, but Jason wasn’t sure if he considered those kisses. Rather, he’d just thought of Raven the entire time, even when that’s exactly what the two of them had expected him to do.

He felt guilty. Guilty because it felt unfair to Raven—and in that fashion, whatever it was they had lasted a few days before they’d gone to simply being friends. She had been asking around and observing, paying awfully close attention to him all throughout the onset of several days and had somehow managed to figure out that someone was Raven.

He’d denied it a million times over, and when his denials grew weaker did she grow more confident in her stance. Jason hadn’t revealed a single portion of their story, though, and they still kept up the act in the smallest ways like walking to that bonfire together just so he could make a statement and feel less naked.

“I’m joking,” Tim had said, rolling his eyes. “How daft do you think I am? I think I’d be more convinced that you believed in true love if you ended up courting a book.”

By the end of the celebrations, Dick had cleared his throat loudly and stood in the middle of the wonky circle the campers had unintentionally made.

“I’m sure you all remember how we have a party planned tonight,” He had said, and everyone had audibly agreed. “Let’s just say I thought of something brilliant a few weeks ago and I think you’re all going to love it.”

-

A hook up closet.

Dick had barely explained it before a wave of excitement had covered the vastness of the room, vibrating through everyone’s veins and blood, making them feel something thrumming in their chest after an evening of rainy disappointment.

Jason thought it was a pretty stupid concept all around, and he felt uncharacteristically nervous. Everyone was beginning to notice how silent he’d been since they came into the common room, and though he tried to be like himself again, he couldn’t really remember what he was supposed to do or say.

“This is mostly for Garfield, who has been trying to get some action for half a decade now and so we’re deciding to help fate out a little bit,” Damian said, a type of nonchalance in his voice that made Garfield nearly tackled him to the ground.

The rules were simple.

There was a dingy closet in the common room, pitch black inside with the door closed and the electricity went off. Everyone wanting to play would write their names on a scrap piece of paper and give it to Dick and Tim, who had set up a small table outside the closet door. They would each take turns pairing up two people who they thought just needed a chance to take the next step and let them into the closet, and bet on it that their pairing of choice would hook up.

It sounded more like brothers bribing chores out of one another than anything else, but Jason chose not to say that out loud. He should find this exciting, just like everyone else was expecting him to. Instead, he watched them organize their table quickly with excited smiles plastered on their faces upon hearing the giddy whispers and talk of everyone else before them.

“Alright, first one is by me,” Tim shouted almost instantly, biting his smile down as he looked at his pairing while everyone quieted down in heightened anticipation. “If these two lovebirds get together, Dick is buying a three course dinner on the menu of the nearest Michelin Star restaurant you can think of for everyone.”

Oh, if Bruce was here right now. Dick looked like he was rethinking his life choices, like the prices of the Michelin three course meals for the fifty people present at camp was just starting to sink in. He could probably afford it, but he’d end up having to explain to Bruce why the bank checked in to ask to look into his account in worry he’d been robbed.

The room was instantly lit up in hoots and cheers, girls shouting their approval to Tim while boys slapped his back for the excellent bet. Some seemed doubtful and shocked at the promised meal, their hand over their mouths in surprise. Tim cleared his throat exaggeratedly, asking for a drumroll that somebody in the audience gleefully delivered, and then opened his mouth to speak.

“Jason, would you like to do the honors?” He said suddenly instead, raising his brows with a smile. The two got along much better these days, and just like earlier, his brother must have noticed that he was still feeling under the weather.

Jason smirked upon hearing everyone’s very enthusiastic approval as he went up to the table and saw the names on the papers, confidence building in his chest as everyone looked like their stomachs were flipping in anticipation.

“Traci, Jamie—I hope you two can figure out a way to make this sound appropriate when your kids ask how you got together,” He said in one breathe, winking at the two’s flustered ruby faces as everyone erupted in screams and crazily loud cheers.

Traci looked confident as ever, throwing a quick quirky peace sign at her friends and high-fiving the boys in her area. Meanwhile, Jamie seemed like he was conflicted between wanting to bury himself six feet under or going for it. Garfield asked him politely and when he’d been given a sheepish ‘Alright’, practically pushed him in. Dick shut the door closed while Tim put on an EDM song loud enough to drum through the thin skin at the hollow of your throat, everyone’s ribcages rattling with the beat and excitement.

Maybe I could actually do this, Jason thought to himself, scanning the crowd’s pearly smiles, bodies dancing to the beat and whispering to one another. He looked out into the faces, finding a few girls eyeing him from where they stood, hooded eyes and intentional winks and bubbly laughter.

He smiled courteously and looked away.

Nothing about a hookup had to be serious, and it was an easy distraction. He could swallow the guilt later and let himself imagine another scenario in the dark behind his eyelids in which he hadn’t been royally screwed up.

And as his attention drifted to somebody else, a petite and pretty figure latched onto her friend’s side, he realized that he’d always known, somewhere deep inside his mind why it never felt right to line the outline of his body with somebody else when his skin and fingers were itching to know how they’d feel holding someone unattainable.

She was watching a friend talk animatedly, the slightest furrow in her brows that he could almost feel himself spreading light smoothing wrinkled velvet. Periwinkle, stormy orbs and long black lashes, a strand of hair like the thick of midnight brushing down from the tuck behind her ear. Jason watched her slender hand reach to tuck it back, the simple motion making his heart drum faster in his chest, an unbearable feeling spreading across his chest. 

He watched her lick her pink lips slightly to moisten them, a flicker of her tongue, the adorable slight pout to her mouth as he concentrated on listening through the booming music. His mind felt overtaken by a million different things, none of them that were objectively appropriate but the thought of looking away from a pretty set of lips from a prettier person was shamelessly ignored.

God, she was beautiful.

If nothing else, couldn’t they forget and run through the rain somewhere deep within the trees? Find a place they’d been memorizing since they were children, sit on the roots beneath the leaves and talk about their favorite books and act out their favorite scenes? Couldn’t he just keep asking her of all her opinions again, because he loved to hear her talk and he loved getting lost in everything she was?

He hadn’t even realized she was staring back until his eyes drifted from his lips to lavenders and blues, gazing at him with a question, or maybe it was annoyance. He looked away quickly.

It was definitely an annoyance.

“Are you sure you don’t want a drink?” He heard Damian say next to him, with a shot glass of something he was surely too young to be having. The mention of alcohol made him feel sick right now. “You’re looking rather constipated.”

Jason looked over at him, and for the first time, he was grateful that his younger brother was being a little shit. It gave him something to focus on and took away the sting in his eyes.

“And you’re looking a little too young for that, kid,” Jason replied, grabbing the glass from his hands and setting it on the table.

“Forgot the time you gave birth to me, mother,” Damian muttered, lunging at the glass and grabbing it before dashing away, Jason running right behind him, shouting about making sure he was grounded when they got home.

—

Raven looked down at the food on the carpet below her.

When Jamie and Traci left the closet looking proper flushed, Dick looked like he was three seconds away from going into medical shock, as surely the cost of his bet was haunting him, literally. He had immediately been pressured to call the nearest Michelin Star restaurant and ask for a ridiculous amount of food for an unimaginable amount of money. Dick had to repeat his order at least thrice, the employee on the other line clearly in disbelief upon hearing of a five thousand dollar order coming from a school camp address.

“The councilors should put you in charge more often,” Somebody said.

It was absolutely ridiculous, but considering the family, Raven was somehow not surprised at all. Dick had specifically asked them to not include the wine, and had ordered Kombucha from another place instead.

“A three course fancy meal with some tea might not be the most popular combination but it’s something,” Dick had explained sheepishly.

In front of her now was a series of plates, the same scattered throughout the room in front of eager faces and booming music. The food on the plate before her looked more like artwork, herb crusted lamb chops on a beautifully arranged greens beneath which was an orange and ruby swipe of thick, aroma rich sauce. With delicious plating, a few earthy mushrooms and potatoes cooked to perfection.

There were too many different meals to process, her senses feeling overwhelmed with the beauty and aroma of each plate. A series of amazed appreciation in the form of less pleasant moans washed over the people, their thankfulness loud and clear.

When Raven went to take a bite from the food, she had to pause with wide eyes to understand what was happening. A mouth watering concoction of wisps of garlic and tender meat overwhelmed her taste buds, the spices mingling together beautifully to mold together a taste too delicious to swallow. Maybe she would begin tearing up like the girl as well.

She and Kory stared at one another, their eyes wide and mouths half open in shock before they fell into a fit of giggles and wonder. Raven swallowed the piece reluctantly, wishing there was something to wash it down but the wine seemed distasteful in front of her.

“Hey,” A voice said behind her, startling her slightly.

She looked around to be faced with Tim Drake, and for a moment she wondered if he had tapped on the shoulder of the wrong person. He had an expression of excitement through his features, but his eyes were kind.

“Dick ordered these too from a nearby place for everybody that isn’t drinking the tea,” He said, placing a few swirling bottles from a bag. “Kory told him you don't drink alcohol at one point so he remembered to be a little inclusive for once.”

Raven looked at him, eyes confused, and then back at the bottles in front of her. ‘Non-alcoholic’ was written on the fronts, a juicy concoction of pretty raspberry pinks, lime greens and yellows and various other enticing flavors. It was a brand she had bought and enjoyed for a long time.

“Jason recommended the company, though, so I’m sorry if it kind of sucks,” Tim said sheepishly.

Her chest felt warm at thought. Of course he did. Perhaps it was only a coincidence, as it was a fairly popular brand, but if he remembered that memory of her lying on the ground in resemblance of a starfish as she listed off all the things she wishes she could drink or eat besides the camp’s food, then maybe her small smile itching at her lips was justified.

“That…” Raven said, looking back at Tim. “I…why?”

Tim shrugged easily.

“The food can be a bit stuffy without something to wash it down,” He explained casually. “I guess he wanted everyone to have the best experience.”

Raven found herself smiling at the gesture, leaning over to see Rose approach Dick Grayson and whisper something in his ear. He looked at her, looking quite confused until she spoke to him further in a plethora of passionate gestures, something clicked in his mind. He began mischievously putting names together from pieces of scrap paper. He seemed to have enthusiastically found an excellent match, giddy and almost child-like and strikingly different from the cool, mature aura he normally gave off.

Raven had had such a different version of them in her head that the simple but considerate gesture almost gave her whiplash. They were always so one dimensional in her head, lacking any real personality or care for the quieter, more easily disappearing people at school.

“Tell him I said thank you,” Raven said, looking back at Tim. “And thank you for the food, as well. Don’t you think it’s a bit too much?”

Tim waved it off, getting up with an easy grin on his face. 

“Nah, absolutely not,” Tim said, shaking his head. “That won’t do well with our plan. We’re thinking of wringing him of all he’s worth for all the times he’s gotten away with being our older brother and not spoiling us.”

Raven found herself laughing at that, pleasantly surprised. They all shared a few joke full of giggles before he said he was called by Dick to get back to the game, the girls shouting ideas for bets after him.

Dick took out an air horn from the drawers, squeezing it and closing his ears as it unleashed an ear piercing sound, the attention of all the students immediately being directed into his direction. First, the students took advantage of the silence to thank Dick at once for the meal.

Raven noticed Jason come into view from a nearby crowd.

He was wearing a black leather jacket on top of a red hoodie, the broadness of his shoulders visible through the clothing. He walked leisurely to the table, hushing everyone down and then saying something that made everyone laugh. Raven couldn’t pay attention though, her eyes felt unable to look away from his figure, fit and casual with a face and features so perfectly placed it almost felt painful to not trace the sharp line of his jaw and the softness beside his mischievous green eyes.

Her fingers burned at the thought. Her chest felt like it was sinking, or maybe flying—she couldn’t decide. She felt like she was hurting from the memory and the possibility of what they could’ve been had reality been the way it was in her head. He was speaking so loud, his words so sharp and echoing through the room that it seemed like the epitome of the Jason Todd everyone knew.

But she remembered his soft voice when he spoke about his love for novels and when he whispered lovingly to animals. She remembered his face when she’d snapped at him that day during fugitive. She remembered his heavy stare by the fire. She remembered his laughter that tinted his cheeks rosy during their baking incident. She remembered the vulnerability and desperation bleeding out of him a few hours later, drenched in sweat and shaking.

But Raven also remembered a more bitter memory that gave birth to five years more of them—a crumpled up letter long burned down.

“Alright,” Dick Grayson said, looking down at his pieces of paper. “If my pairing is successful, Tim buys everyone the first item on their wishlist and dresses up as Santa. If not, I’m buying a fully funded one week trip to Bora Bora for everyone.”

Damian and Jason’s jaws dropped.

“Wait, what was that about Santa?” Tim asked.

“I would’ve told father about this but either option sounds too promising,” Cassandra said, pleasantly amused.

Gasps overtook the crowd, and once again, everyone melted into excitement and screams. Raven thought it was absolutely ridiculous and extremely insane, even though the concept sounded incredibly enticing. A few people seemed to feel off at the prospect of the boys spending so much money, until one person shouted ‘Eat the rich!’ and suddenly all guilt disappeared into approving cheers and laughter. It was true—there was little to be pitied in this situation.

“Remember everyone,” Jason spoke up in a loud voice that rumbled through the whole of the common room. “Tim’s money is not his own yet so if anybody here has some anger towards my father and his corporate ass, feel more than free to relish in this.”

That seemed to make the students cheer and laugh even harder.

“Can’t you guys chose something more practical?” Damian muttered to himself. “Like, if Dick wins then Jason has to stay quiet for a week?”

“Sounds great,” Jason said flicking his younger brother’s ear. “And if Tim wins, we make Damian into our very own piñata.”

Everyone laughed. Raven caught herself smiling before she bit down her grin. It was too late though; Jason had already seen her expression in the crowd. And worse of all, though perhaps she’d imagined it, he’d smiled back before looking over at the rest of the crowd quickly.

“Alright, enough,” Dick said, and then cleared his throat, parting his lips.

It seemed to happen in slow motion. 

It began with anticipation, a type of excitement that seemed to run in synchronized pulses through everybody’s blood as the nervous candidates fiddled with their fingers, their chests rising slowly with every deep breath. The patter of slow rain could still be heard outside, the scent of delicious meals teasing underneath everyone’s noses.

Dick Grayson licks his lips once and then parts them, raising the two papers before himself. He opens his mouth to speak. Behind him, Tim Drake has his arms crossed while he leans against the wall next to the closet, one hand gripping the doorknob. Damian Wayne has an annoyed expression on his face, but a flicker of curiosity in his expression where he sits cross legged on the floor near a sofa. Cassandra Cain is squinting her eyes in question, eager to hear the next couple of words that come out of Dick Grayson’s mouth.

Jason Todd is sitting on the table, elbows on his knees and watching the papers carefully. His hands are in a light fist, veins visible in the slight clench and eyes narrowed. His very figure in such casual stature is tempting and Raven, in that split second, is still feeling want and a hundred less pleasant emotions at once.

And then,

“Jason and Raven.”

What?

Is somebody cheering? Are they all cheering? 

It seems to be, but Raven can barely hear. The sound in her ears is like sinking under the ocean, faint noises from the world beyond but she’s too enraptured in the numbness of her senses to hear them. Her vision becomes blank and only her mind can flicker images through her head, the shape of Dick’s lips saying out the words can only mean that she heard what she thought she did.

What?

Jason looks pale as a ghost, Raven thinks she can see the quiver of his lips even from here. She sees him as the sole person in a dark tunnel that has become of her vision. There’s something thrumming in her heart, like the bass of the music that was playing a while ago. Is that her heart, threatening to burst out? There’s an ache in her stomach, like the butterflies are yelling loud enough for the gentle skin to vibrate, but she can’t hear them.

What?

She can’t hear anything.

Until it comes to her like a huge white spark, like your eyes open and adjusted to the colors after a blinding collision. The sounds come back—yes, the people are cheering insanely. The sight comes back—no, she’s not in a black tunnel with only Jason Todd in his breathless glory sitting stunned at the words. The drumming in her chest is her thunderous heart, the images in her mind are ones of a young face and green eyes and smiles she thought about for nights and nights and nights, replaying the things he said to her in her head with her hand over her chest because she could feel it, she could feel it aching so pleasantly.

“Shit,” Raven hears somebody say, so she whipped her head around to her side and her eyes bore into Kory’s, who can see the shock in her lavender orbs becoming panic, panic, panic. “I wrote your name down, I was going to tell you—thought it’d be fun but—I’m sorry, you don’t need to go.”

She doesn’t feel any offense in her heart, but Raven doesn’t really know what’s happening. She feels as though she’s sinking into the water, drowning and drowning and being brought up to air for not nearly long enough. She doesn’t even understand why; it’s a stupid game, she can just say no.

Jason is looking at Dick, completely appalled, but there’s something else there in the twist of his expression, in the frown on his mouth and the furrow of his eyebrows. He looks half in shock and half infuriated, and the mere thought that that may be so makes Raven wants to sink down further.

Tim is chewing his lips like he’s immediately realized that this was a bad idea for some reason or another—Dick is still getting there, still trying to figure out the storm swirling around in Jason’s eyes. For a moment, Raven almost feels like Jason is mere seconds away from walking out when he gets up and starts walking.

Starts walking towards the closet.

He can’t be serious. This cannot be happening, Raven thinks, and the panic is being replaced by anger. He thinks he can just take the leads in these things like it’s nothing. He thinks he has the right.

The crowd has become silent. It’s clear something is wrong when they stare at Raven, who is trying to keep her emotions under control and not let them destroy everything around her; not let them spill out and force her to grab at the hundreds of things scratching at her throat, form them into words and spit them out right then and there.

She notices the people are chanting out ‘Bora Bora!’, and both Tim and Dick seem two seconds away from interfering and cancelling this round. Raven won’t crack under their pressure, but she still feels herself shaking, trying to grab at her hands to stop them but it’s no use.

“Listen, everyone,” Jason speaks up and his voice is certainly shaking, ringing with an obviously audible sense of nervousness. “Enough with the pressuring. I won’t have it.”

Raven looks up and finds Jason’s eyes, and suddenly everything changes.

A memory sweeps her away.

One day, when the sunshine was unbelievably heavy for autumn months and the leaves on the ground were the perfect crisp and color of orange, the two of them had found themselves far from camp and face to face with a lake that had a crackling log dropped atop it. Though beyond it was nothing but green marsh, the wood made a perfect and exciting little bridge.

Jason had walked across it timidly, clearly terrified and allowing himself to feel that in front of her. Nevertheless, he’d made it through to the other side, only wobbling once enough to make Raven roll on the ground in laughter. She expected nothing less than for him to hop across perfectly composed by the end and smiling from ear to ear.

When it was Raven’s turn, she had begun the walk smoothly at first until she reached the middle and looked down to the swampy lake below her. She could see little mosquitos and vague figures of fish and other little critters. It made her nearly lose her balance, suddenly feeling too high up on the creaky wooden log.

And then Jason had called her name. She had looked up again, and realized she only walked as smoothly as she had for the first half because her eyes had been locked in his excited ones. It made her feel safe and protected—the confidence radiating in his eyes and eagerness at the act made her think she was capable of anything.

He had looked at her with a bright smile and a nod, and Raven had walked across the bridge safely and smoothly, jumping off the end and giving him a little, quick and sudden hug. He hadn’t had time to react before she pulled away. All she saw was that sweet crooked and flashed a smile before she turned around and ran across the log back to camp, earning a shocked gasp from Jason as he chased her and consequently fell straight into the lake.

Raven had laughed harder than she had in her life.

The memory fades away softly and slowly.

And the look in Jason’s eyes are the same as then. It’s not the excitement or the eagerness or anything that she sees in his eyes, it’s the sense of security and the quiet message that yes, they shared something special in the past and yes, they know one another enough to understand this moment.

It’s the same damn look.

Raven thinks she’s going to melt away, and maybe sob because there’s too many things that feel like they’re finally revealing themselves after years of being denied and stuffed down into a little locked box somewhere forgotten and deep into her mind.

Why couldn’t you see that I missed you?

She swallows it down and walks over to him. And the crowd may be cheering because they suspect something different, but that’s not what this is about for Raven, and somehow, Raven knows—she knows that this isn’t what it’s about for Jason Todd either.

Nobody needs to know everything; all the details and the reality behind this simple action. They can all think of cheap scenarios—and with that thought, Raven realizes that it’s the first time she’s felt as though she doesn’t care what others think. The funniest part to her is that it’s during a situation you’d expect her to care the most.

Jason blinks, his expression changes and it’s now confusion clearly spread all over his face. He’s taken off completely off guard, but then his eyes set like he understands.

It’s, strangely, and in their own little way, about trust.

Trust in what? She doesn’t know. But it’s enough to get her to walk closer and closer, memorizing the sound of her footsteps on the wooden floor, her attention entirely focused on emerald eyes gazing into hers instead of the wave of ooh’s and the concerned expressions on the other boys’ faces. She walks and walks further into the dark and feels it envelop her, her face to the wall as she lets the darkness embrace her entirely as the door closes behind them and the last sliver of light from the fireplace far beyond the door is barely seen.

Raven turns around.

—

They wrote letters to one another all the time throughout the years, and never told another soul about them.

Jason would rave about a brand new video game that he’d been hooked on for days, and they’d sneak into the manor to play the game all night, even though it wasn’t something she liked doing alone. Raven would tell him about the author she saw in a grocery store the other day and Jason would buy a few copies of their books and read it from start to finish. 

Jason had written letters he’d never sent and instead stuffed them into a box.

Letters about his nightmares, about his fears.

Still, despite not sharing the dirty bits, Jason still felt like she knew him better than anyone else. They were young—awfully young, but Jason knew what it felt like to be misunderstood and what he felt with Raven wasn’t that.

He was always prone to losing his temper, even as a child, and she always knew how to calm him down. Even if he never sent those types of letters, he’d always write them out to hear because it felt like she was listening regardless and that alone helped more than anything else ever has.

One year, the last year, Raven’s friend Kory had gotten a phone before she could, and Bruce had bought Jason a brand new one when he turned thirteen. Kory would give her her phone when she visited, the only friend beside Jason that Raven trusted completely, and the two of them would talk until they fell asleep. There would be silence on the other line, but being with her in silence was somehow better than everything else.

It was such a strange feeling for a thirteen year old.

And that year, when he’d come to camp, he’d seen Raven with another light as well. All the other boys would talk about a hundred different pretty girls at once, but he always thought that only one of them shined brighter than the rest.

So perhaps he had a crush, but it wasn’t just a crush, and five years without it had made him realize it quite obviously. It was pathetic to deny himself of the fact that he loved her, that perhaps he didn’t know exactly what that meant but that he wanted to be by her side and make her happy because he was so overwhelmingly happy and himself around her and he knew that was what love was supposed to feel like.

And just a moment ago, when Raven looked at him with that security in her eyes, it made him wonder if they were thinking about the same memory. If they were both reminded of laughter and lakes and trusting glances between the flicker of an eye.

In the dark of the room, with the banging music behind them, Jason can barely see her. The light from the fireplace below the door is weak, just barely an outline of her figure and highlighting the side of her lower lip and a bit of her cheeks, glistens only slightly on her hair enough for him to differentiate her features. Jason can’t for the life of him keep his eyes off her lips, and his hands are in fists because he’s afraid the heat of his fingers won’t be able to control holding onto her waist and pulling her close and forgetting about everything he’s meant to say.

So he burns holes into his palms instead and bites his lips, seconds away from pouring everything out but knowing that it is not the right place, or perhaps not the right time.

But there was something Jason had seen in her, something he never allowed himself to admit for many reasons; he’d seen the way she looked at him when he was with Rose, and for a flicker of a moment he’d hoped that she felt something. He wouldn’t let him bask in that possibility for long enough, knew it wasn’t possible and wasn’t fair at all.

Raven opens her mouth to speak just as Jason notices the window letting in a steady breeze.

“Jason,” She says, and the muscles of his chest contracts. He isn’t used to hearing his name comes from her lips anymore, and it sounds beautiful and foreign and clean. 

“There’s a window,” He says, his voice is caught enough for it to only come out as barely a whisper, so he clears his throat and tries again. “There’s a window, if you want to escape.”

Raven’s lips set, she seems to look down and then towards the window and lets out an exhausted sigh.

“I’m not escaping,” Raven says, shaking her head. Her voice is quivering. “I’m sick of always escaping.”

“Yeah,” Jason responds because he understands, he understands the feeling. “Would you prefer we escape together?”

Raven brings herself to look into his eyes again. There seems to be a million thoughts whirring in that brilliant mind of hers. The scent of her perfume is light but addicting, a sweet concoction like expensive fruit and vanilla. He wishes he could get close enough to her skin to make out every individual scent.

“Escape together?” She asks, and the tone of her voice makes him smile wide enough to be embarrassing, so he tries to bite his cheek and control the softness blooming into his eyes. She sounds a little sarcastic, a little hint of her dry humor and amusement is peaking through and he can’t help but try to keep hold of that familiar tone. “Why?”

Why did you want me to be here is left unsaid. Because it’s true—and she saw it in his stare alone.

“Never thought I’d say it but I’m kind of sick of the chaos back there,” He says carefully. “Besides, I’m sure they wouldn’t mind if we played our signature hide and seek with them, yeah? Those idiots would thrive on the chance to gossip about what’s taking so long anyway.”

Fuck.

Jason didn’t even realize it when it was coming out of his mouth, a reference to the past said too soon. Suddenly, it feels like the delicate atmosphere shatters with the shock that is exuding out of Raven’s orbit, the painfully visible part to her lips. He can tell she’s schooling her expression, trying not to give away what she felt at whatever he has just said. What an absolute screw-up.

Signature hide and seek; where it all began.

The memory of them feeding birds together comes rushing back into his head, and he almost begins with a strings of fumbled apologies until he hears her clear her throat and walk towards the window slowly.

“I’m just trying to get some fresh air, is all,” She says, and there is no snark and sarcasm or wit in her voice. It’s just a plain statement, a little annoyance clear around the edges, and somehow that hurts more than if she were to acknowledge what he said.

Then again, Jason should feel grateful. He doesn’t really deserve her attention, anyway, considering how badly he screwed up for all these years.

He follows her, body engulfed with melancholy, opens the window hatch for her and looks at the dark wall before him while she climbs onto the shelves and out the window, wondering and wondering what fate lies before them and how much will change with a simple walk. He wonders if he’ll sleep tonight content with somewhat of a closure or with stinging eyes. Either way, he’s sure that there will be a gaping hole in his chest that’ll never go away with whatever kind of closure he could possibly attain, or worse.

-

They walk straight into the forest, because otherwise they’d be walking in circles around the campsite. It’s innocent. It means nothing. It doesn’t have to mean anything.

But there’s trepidation in the air. There’s something delicate around them, and it’s keeping them on edge. They wonder how they’ll feel in the next morning; will they wake up with closure or more sore than ever before?

For some reason, that’s how this feels. Like a moment that defines the rest of their time here, and the rest of their time afterwards.

It’s stormy, the light pitter-patter in contrast to the thunderous rumbles from a distance and the grey sky despite the night hours. From here, they can still hear the booming bass from the music back in the common room. Their steps disappear slightly into the thick but shallow mud, pebbles and wet leaves alike molding into the earth beneath every shift of their feet.

Raven barely realizes that they are walking through memories upon memories, until she looks up and can almost see vividly the silhouette of two children running around the trees together, finding the better parts of themselves with one another and there’s such clear laughter in the air that Raven catches herself smiling at the memory for only a moment.

All of a sudden, Raven stops.

She turns her face to the side and watches the familiar area. It’s the place they first properly met, above that tree is where the group of birds normally laid their nests. There is nothing there anymore, but the memory is. She can almost feel the nervousness and melancholy radiating off of Jason behind her, but she cannot understand why that is.

“Can I ask you a question?” Raven asks, her voice watery.

Here it comes—Jason can feel it and it made him sick to his stomach. 

“Anything,” He whispers, like it’s that easy.

“What was the point?” She can feel herself unravelling, and for the first time, she lets herself feel it. “I’ve tried for years to understand if I imagined everything. I’ve wondered for years if I was hallucinating it all, or over exaggerating it all—“

“Raven,”

“But that is such a lie, isn’t it, Jason?” She bites, head whipping back, not daring to read his panicking expression. “You knew what you meant to me, how much I needed you there, and yet you still choose to do what you did. You told me all about the shit happening in your life that you never told anybody else and I did the same. That means something, doesn’t it? You told me a bunch of bullshit about how you felt the same, and no matter how much I try, I just cannot believe that you’re that much of a cruel person—“

“It wasn’t bullshit, Raven—“

“I want an explanation!” Raven yelled, pushing him back, ignoring the way that the corners of her eyes were burning, the beads of tears already prepared to spill out. “I want an explanation so I can be done with all of this and move on with my damn life.”

He stared at her, silence at his lips and something sad and afraid in his eyes.

“Enough with that face, I’m done,” She yelled, shaking her head, teeth gritted. “You act like you’ve never known me, and then you give me these fucking looks that I cannot stand, Jason Todd, I cannot stand them,”

Jason instantly looks down at his feet. Is he shaking, or is she? Are they both or is it the tension between them threatening to snap and spill and ruin them for good?

“I know you’re upset, and I don’t fucking understand why, but I know you’re upset,” Raven says, her voice is cold and there’s a bit to every syllable. “But you cannot expect me to sit here and stay quiet and comfort you about something that I don’t know about while I let everything eat me from the inside out and—“

“Fuck,” Jason says, an incredulous look on his face as he looks up. “Fuck, Raven, no. I’m not looking for goddamn sympathy, this isn’t about me—“

“No, it’s entirely about you,” Raven snaps back. “I need an explanation. This is the last of this camp. We’re going to return to school for one last year and then it’s over.”

“Okay,” Jason resigns, and his voice is small and quiet. It’s so unlike Jason Todd that it almost gives her whiplash. “Can we sit somewhere?”

Raven looks at him, and her eyes are sad and angry. She nods, and then starts walking towards a larger tree with ample shade beside a lake. It’s cold enough for their hands to bite where they are curled into fists and the occasional breeze is nipping at their cheeks. Somehow, it feels warmer than whatever is between them.

They sit. They stare at the water. They wait. They wait for the thoughts in their heads to be sorted well enough so that they come out well.

“Just bare with me,” Jason says, crossing his arms while Raven warms her with her breath. 

Jason breathes in, and for a moment he wonders if he’s doing something wrong. The walls that he’s built over the years feel like their crumbling, and he braces himself for the cold to sweep inside, circling around him and spreading across every corner of his skin. He doesn’t know what could go wrong, but he feels a sense of dread at being so open.

However, Jason knows that it’s in his head, a manifestation of his heaviest fears; abandonment, rejection, being left in the dark by himself again. When he feels the walls falling with the deep exhale he intakes, the air that circulates inside isn’t cold like the rainy weather on the outside of his skin. it’s warm, and enveloping and loving.

And that—that feeling is somehow scarier than the cold, but it’s addicting like a drug, and he finds himself opening his mouth to speak before his walls change their minds.

He doesn’t look at her when he tells her about the children at school and the rumors of his homeless life in the past. He doesn’t look at her when he tells her about the fighting and the anger and all the insecurities, about the way he’d watch the backs of his brothers and wondered why his life had started so harshly on the wrong foot; why he always felt like he was still falling down the same, angry path.

He looks at the ground and the dripping beads of rain falling slowly down his large hands, and speaks of the image of his father and mother he had in his head.

His father—a tall man and determined brown eyes who had black hair like his shaved into a buzzcut and large, burly hands. He barely appeared in his early months of life, but his mother kept a photograph in her drawers and he’d seen him once. He’d felt bad for the seemingly present gentleness in his eyes and had been overjoyed upon hearing his mother speak to him about that man, when she was awfully drunk and outside in the blackened sky held a glowing blue moon.

His mother—golden hair swirled into natural curls and styled into a simple short cut. Her eyes were the same as his own, and he always felt pride in his little chest knowing that small, insignificant fact, because he saw how busy his mother always was and felt happy at sharing something with such a hardworking mother.

He was too young to know it wasn’t the case, but those couple of months in the streets without a home to return to or parents to seek, had made him colder and harder without even realizing it. By the time Bruce found him, he was certain he was already damaged, until he found out the truth about his parents and felt like his whole world had finally snapped.

It was natural for him to be surrounded by a destruction in some form or another. He was born, and his supposed father left to pursue a life of crime and robbery. He was born, and his supposed mother was sickened at the way he sucked up all her time and finally found a use for him once he’d found a real father and a true family. He grew up, and the people at his private school that were full of the richest children of the richest families were bigger than him and spoke harsh and cold words. He grew up, and Bruce Wayne couldn’t connect or understand his son, every longing look riddled with discomfort on how to make everything right between them. He grew up, and he saw his brothers and sisters couldn’t connect with his sadness in the way that he felt it, and it was eating away at him.

It was natural for disaster to be around him everywhere he went, it was natural for him to be a stain dragging along the cold streets of Gotham city where he’d been born, raised, and trashed, and born all over again.

So to him, in his small thirteen year old mind, in his fragile state of being, found it an indisputable fact that he wouldn’t allow someone like Raven, a blossoming light of warmth and good things even if she couldn’t believe it herself, be stained and damaged and hurt by him. Raven was someone unlike anyone he’d ever met, and he wouldn’t be responsible for causing discomfort for her as well.

Because he believed the world was wrong, and the people were wrong, and he was one of those people.

But his actions weren’t entirely selfless. They were selfish in several ways. He was protecting himself from the thought that one day Raven may see through him and see what his father, mother and all the children at school like Jack Napier saw; a fraud from a broken place pretending to be okay. He thought she’d be disgusted too, and awkward, and burdened once he began truly opening up all of his little dreams and his many nightmares.

He’d sent that letter, and then gone to sleep, unable to face the reality. He’d woken up to the feeling of nausea and a plate of dinner gone cold by his bedside drawer. He’d swallowed all the water to swallow the lump in his throat and then joined the boxing club the very next morning.

But he had been lucky.

He had been lucky, because he was wrong. The people around him cared and didn’t think he was a stain.

He spent all his time focusing on the ache in his knuckles, until he came back from his first day at school and was unable to live the same any further. It had been difficult enough to see Raven, but it had also been difficult to see the mingle of the children from his old school and from his new one, the two personalities between weak and beloved clashing and realizing how much of a fraud he had been. That, along with the same falling asleep and waking up to another grey day routine was wearing him down and the weights on his shoulders were pushing him to hell.

He’d come home, knocked off his shoes and locked himself in his room. They’d all tried knocking on the doors and shouting at him to come out, but he’d stayed in and thrown everything off the shelves and off the walls and off his bed until his room was a wreck.

And Alfred had yelled upon hearing the noise and Bruce had come as fast as he could, knocking down the door and finding his son falling apart on the carpeted floor. He’d come, and he’d done something he never had done often.

Bruce had held him tightly enough for him to barely move, giving him no other option but to sob into his father’s shoulder and ask him why he felt this way. Bruce had clearly understood far too well, and had simply hugged him and hugged him and hugged him.

It hadn’t been easy. Jason had felt like he was on a downwards slope for at least another year and never truly felt like he’d been healing until his family was a little closer, until he found himself joining that therapy session they’d pushed him to, until he started to wake up with a motivation to feel better at least.

But even now; as a happier person, he still had his flaws and issues. He still couldn’t properly express his emotions, and he still couldn’t speak up to Raven. Raven, who’d always lived inside his dreams and made him feel both emptier and complete when he awoke in the mornings, had become an intelligent and mysterious stranger. He’d chosen the seat behind her at class and at the games of the sports he didn’t play in just to hear the small comfort of her laughter and her words.

Jason looked at the ceiling of his bedroom and would speak out in whispers at times.

I really miss you, he’d whisper, I hope you’re doing okay.

I’m really sorry, he’d whisper, I hope it’s not something you think about.

I think I loved you, he’d whisper, I hope I could tell you that I still do.

He doesn’t even realize that he’s said that last thought out loud, until he hears an impossibly small gasp coming from his side and he mirrors the sound without thinking, eyes widened and staring off into the lakeside; there’s a sharp contrast from the warm memories in his mind.

His heart is racing.

Is there a wetness in his eyes? There’s certainly something misting them. He wonders if they’re fogged up and even bluer from the red in the whites of his eyes, if he’s sucked in the state of the wet, blue lake before him.

His heart is racing.

What about all the times he imagined this? A figure in his mind and a comforting aura, a place where he felt safe that he could unravel everything at once and they wouldn’t say a word. The figure that always took the face of her when he looked to see.

His heart is racing, and he looks to see.

He looks to see and he sees her face and it’s screaming something sad like grief and empathy, so devoid of the pity he despises that it’s painfully clear in the downwards quirk of her parting frown. Her lips seal shut and she thinks he sees them quivering, he looks up to her eyes and they are misty and teary.

“I…” Raven says, and it barely comes out. He thinks he sees something wet trail down her reddened cheeks, reddened like her ruby lips. 

He feels genuine fear and his stomach is fallen somewhere deep, his heart is racing and her silence is terrifying him. Jason doesn’t expect her to know what to say, but he doesn’t know what to expect from an answer at all.

He realizes he has little to lose, so he reaches over to cradle her face with his hands, the pitter-patter of rain slowing down around them. He keeps swallowing because the lump in his throat keeps looming in his throat like his lungs are full of water and they’re threatening to come out. He holds her, holds her face and stares into her eyes and hopes his voice can scream the enormity of his apology.

“I’m really sorry, Raven,” Jason whispers, and his voice is painful to her ears. From the quiet, steadiness of his voice, Raven can somehow tell that he’s about to spill. “I’m really fucking sorry. I know what I did was wrong. This isn’t an excuse—fuck, please don’t think I’m trying to excuse anything but I just—that’s my reason and…and I’m really sorry.”

Raven is quick to shake her head, touches the back of his neck and her cold fingers are somehow warm to him. She pulls him in, tucking his head into the crook of her neck that he leans into without even realizing it; like his body is simply aware of what is happening and how to receive her warmth and comfort. He keeps whispering his apologies into her neck, breathing in the addicting scent of her perfume tangled with rain. She’s shuddering and shaking from the wet in his hair, from the truth behind it all and from the delicate nature of their moment.

But he knows that he cannot be the only one being comforted right now; he’s well aware of all the pain that he’s caused and he could hate himself for it if he wasn’t so preoccupied with moving away only enough to wrap his arms around her backside, pulling her close to his chest, tucking her body into his in hopes that she’ll feel some warmth inside and out.

Their breaths are visible puffs in the air and he believes there’s tears but he couldn’t be bothered to care.

“I’m sorry that all of that happened to you,” She says, and she’s quiet and Jason is breaking—but it’s alright because they seem to be breaking together and there’s a promise of something like healing throughout it all. “I’m sorry that those excuses for parents and all of those kids and everything made you think you’re not worthy of being loved.”

Jason shook his head and leaned in further. They were close, impossibly close, and everything felt impossibly right. God, he’d been craving for this for so long that it felt surreal.

Raven scrunched up his shirt in her hands, her forehead pressed into the muscles of his chest, feeling the pattern of his breathing. She’s still making small comments of shock and empathy, little sounds escaping her.

“You’re worthy of being loved,” She whispers, and Jason can feel the sound of the words on the skin of his clothed chest. “I’ve always believed that.”

“And I thanked you by pushing you away, pretending you didn’t exist for five fucking years,” Jason said, incredulous. “I need to know. I need to hear it—how you feel.”

Raven breathes out. The rain has stopped and the quiet and occasional pattern is only from the rain slipping down the leaves and splattering in the small puddles on the softened dirt and firm mud.

“I’ve always been good at hiding everything,” Raven said, and Jason hums sweetly because yes, I know you. “But I was kind of rather devastated and—and really upset. But more than all, I guess I was angry.”

Her sad words hurt him somewhere inside, and he nods into her neck. He goes to apologize but she’s speaking again.

“I was angry at how quickly and easily you ended things and how casual you looked at school,” She continues, still staring holes into his shirt. “I used to go through the day and see how happy you seemed, and it just hurt really bad because I just wanted us like us again.”

“You had every right,” Jason whispers. “I should have handled things better. I had to paint a smile over my face every day though, but I hope you believe me when I say that my life would’ve been so much brighter if I hadn’t fucked up everything between us.”

Raven looks at him.

“I think I’ve just missed you, Jason,” Raven said, her voice watery. “I kept thinking of what went wrong but I kept seeing people changing as they grew up and I wanted to accept that maybe you had too but I couldn’t.”

Jason looks into her eyes and shakes his head, tells her that she never did anything wrong; that she was everything. And she looks back, wonders out loud if she should’ve asked more questions, but he keeps a single finger to her lips and reiterates that none of it was her fault. The feeling of her lips feels like it’s imprinted into the pads of his finger for a long time.

“Then I have a question for you,” She says carefully. “Why now? Why didn’t you just dive away from my questions and leave? It wouldn’t have been hard to just deny everything and go.

Jason shakes his head.

“It’s always hard to go from you, you know,” He says. “But I stayed because everything is ending. And I didn’t want to leave these things unsaid, you know?”

Raven nods.

“Have you left anything unsaid, then?”

He’s quiet.

“One thing,” Jason says, and it’s barely a whisper. “Do you know that I love you?”

When Jason says it, his voice seems like it’s coming above a soothing water. The simple pitter-patter feels like a rushing storm, clouding her ears and her senses and leaving her only with ghosts of confusion drifting across her mind. Her heart drops and then lifts and then soars, her chest aches and twists and her hands are shaking.

Her hands are shaking.

I love you. The sound of his voice repeating it is circling and wrapping across her mind. Her lungs suddenly don’t seem large enough to fit in all the air, keeping her breathless while her eyes are burning and burning until the fire wells up and pours out like tears.

And his voice. His voice, that Raven has decided she cannot get enough of. His voice is boyish and deeper and a little rough around the edges. There’s almost a huskiness to it and she finds herself addicted to that—almost as much as she’s addicted to that voice saying those three words.

Raven leans away and looks at him, and his expression knocks the rest of the oxygen inside her blood outside of her parted lips. An epitome of an enigmatic beauty, saddened by the years and apologetic with the mistiness in his eyes and nobody—nobody sees him like this but Raven.

She wants to cradle his face, so she does. She wants to lean in so their foreheads touch, so does she. She aches to hear it once more so she can be sure that there’s a reason why she finds herself crying.

“I love you,” Jason repeats, and it’s everything. He takes her hand from where it’s cradling his jawline and kisses her palm. “And I won’t be offended if you don’t believe me, but I love you and that’s my truth. I’ve loved you from a distance and it’s something anybody could’ve told you.”

Raven looks at him. Wherever they are going will be difficult, and they’ll have enough to work on, but she realizes that she believes him. Her doubt and her suspicion over the truth behind his actions was well placed, and she believes him. She believes it when he says he loves her, and she tries but cannot feel anything other than pure genuinely in those awfully green eyes that she adored so much.

Adores so much.

“Is that so, Jason Todd?” Raven says, and her voice is masked with tease but Jason is aware of the fondness behind it.

Jason looks at her—he picks up the atmosphere that she puts down and his chest feels light. He looks at her, and remembers too much, just enough for it to feel like something is erupting and exploding like nebulas in his veins and in his chest. He needs her beside him, needs her calming eyes and her pretty voice and everything about her. He looks at her lips and wonders how he managed five years without this.

“That,” He says, and he doesn’t care if there’s a blush threatening to tint his cheeks pink. He snakes a hand to hold the curve of her waist, another holding her chin, lifting her face up slightly to drown in her eyes. “That is so, indeed.”

“So what happens now?” Raven asks, and her smile is blinding.

“I don’t know,” Jason says, unable to keep his eyes off the pretty curve of her lips. “Maybe we should shake hands and call it a night?”

Raven smiles until it becomes a smirk. She leans away, untangling her body from his own and puts out her hand, in an effort to allow him to live out his cheekiness. Jason glances at her with a smile playing in his eyes and when he grasps her hand, firm and sure, it seems genuine.

Like he’s okay with this display of truce alone as long as she keeps staring at him with all the kindness he’s ever known.

Suddenly, Raven pulls him forward by the grasp of their handshake until she’s inches away and Jason is letting out a shaky breath that settles quietly on the curved and soft plane of her lips.

“I love you too,” She says, and before she has the time to breathe or lean in, Jason seems to have been electrocuted back to life, his limbs are quick and his lips are impossibly near.

Jason Todd surges forward, and then it happens. Both of his hands reach for her cheeks, while hers scrunches his shirt. His lips were pressed firmly on hers and there might be a roll of thunder clapping somewhere nearby, or perhaps it’s the sound of light crashing behind their eyelids, exploding into phenomena—or perhaps it’s the sound of their sighing, relieved and content and there’s memories.

There’s memories of themselves as children, holding innocence between them that was blooming and blooming and blooming until finally. Finally, Jason’s lips were on hers, harsh and fierce and biting as she’d always imagined them to be. They are warm, and slightly slick, but impossibly soft. He kisses with intent, like he’s been imagining it for centuries, and that’s probably right. Their faces are hot, every corner of them is burning, and Raven cannot calm down the beat of her drumming heart when his hand slinks to the back of her neck and entangles with her hair, pulling her impossibly closer until she stumbles into his lap.

“Oh?” Jason says, collecting her on his thighs, hands shaking nervously as they settle on her own. “Somebody’s eager.”

Raven glares at him, but cannot keep it consistent and ends up smiling. He really is such a drag.

“Shut up,” Raven said, and Jason held her closer, one hand threading through her raven hair, faces centimeters away from one another.

He leaned in, pressing endless small and sweet kisses to the plush of her lips, little passionate bursts that sometimes lingered and sometimes melted into her mouth, swiping across her lips with every flick of the tongue and cradling her face close, always close.

“This is kind of insane, isn’t it?” Raven whispers. “I mean, just this morning…”

“Yeah,” Jason whispers back, pressing a kiss to the corner of her mouth. “It’s kind of amazing, too.”

Raven hums in agreement and presses her cheek to his own when he soaks up all his attention and pours it to the sensitive skin of her jawline, a wet bite latched until the skin blooms a perfect pinkish color and she sighs—there’s embarrassment floating around her at the sounds. He gives it one long lasting kiss and drops his head when she tugs on his hair.

Noted.

Jason wraps his arms around her, and he sighed in a way that sounds like relief and content, breathing into her skin. Raven tightens her legs where they sit straddled beside his thighs, and both of them feel everything. The tenderness, the softness of the moment welling up all these years, and the innocent silence between them and the smiles pressed to each other’s skin subconsciously is proof of their synchronized thoughts.

Raven tangles her fingers in his hair and wonders how the world turned for all those years, how she went without her heart feeling sweeter and pinker and floating in clouds. She feels like her blood is sweeter like candy, and she feels far too much in her chest that it threatens to jump out—jump, like the fast pace of her heart that cannot slow down.

How can she expect it to when she’s at such a close proximity with this boy? How can he expect it to when he’s at such a close proximity with this girl? When their lips are still tender from their kisses, when their minds are still whirring and drunk on each other’s words and their touching, impossibly close and touching.

“Thank you,” Jason whispers, and his voice isn’t completely there. Raven wraps her arms around his neck tighter and burns herself into him further. He’s on the brink of breaking from how overwhelmed he feels. “Thank you for listening.”

“It’s just me,” Raven whispers back and kisses the side of his neck. She feels him shiver, she feels him breaking slowly. “You can let it go now, Jason.”

He breathes in, and when he breathes out, Raven feels trails of tears sliding down her neck and pooling at her collarbones. The motions of his heart feel like the opposite of breaking but this time, the ache in his chest is a sweeter one. It’s mending together, scooping up all the dust of some time long ago and filling up the edges where it’s still cracked. 

For several minutes, only the sound of his soft sniffing and sighing is present. But then, he speaks, and it’s louder than the beat of her chest.

“Of course I love you. It is my fault that you have not known it all the while,” Jason whispers.

“You’re going to end me with those references,” Raven smiled wider, and her voice is full of memory and awe.

“Mmm,” Jason hums happily. “My rose.”

She couldn’t fall further if she tried.

—

“Alright, this is just ridiculous,” Damian says to himself where the common room is still in high, excited spirits even after an hour of the closet door being closed. He gets up suddenly, reaches for the knob and twists it open before his siblings can reach him with horrified faces. “Rise and shine, lovers, get the hell out—“

It’s empty.

Damian’s jaw is on the ground, and resembling him is the rest of their siblings and the entirety of the common room. There is no chatter or whisper or conversation, just a heavy wave of confusion that settles thickly on everybody.

“Um,” Dick says, and that’s all he can say. “Jason? Raven?”

Tim’s eyes go bright and he points to the barely visible window.

“You don’t think they…” He says quietly. “You don’t think they escaped, right?”

Damian’s face twists into a mischievous one.

“Oh, I’m going to get a ton of mileage out of this one.”

-

He’s trying not to stare too much at her figure as she’s looking throughout her duffle bag, hand sifting through layers of clothing and items.

Her face is beautiful. It’s always beautiful, but there’s something even prettier about her focused expression, a sweet pout at her lips in frustration. Her hips dip where her waist narrows, legs longer and slim in the tightened jeans she’s wearing, and a shadow of her belly visible—soft and pale and tempting—teasing under the shorter shirt she wears. The hands he has crossed where he leans on the doorway are burning, and his heart feels impossibly full.

Raven huffed in annoyance, and then walks over to him.

“I can’t find my hat,” She said, crossing her arms and cocking a hip absentmindedly. His mind notices the movement before they dart back up to her. “The one day the sun’s out and I can’t find my hat.”

Jason takes off the one on his head, and places it on hers, smiling at the view. It does something to his heart to see a little of himself on her.

“You can have mine, babe,” He says, and he notices her blush at the pet name and how she tries to hide it by adjusting the hat. He crocks his head anyway, catching her eye, and bites his lips and smile when she laughs and thank him. He reaches up to rest his hands on the for the top casing of the doorway, unable to stop staring at her, when his eyes notice something behind her.

There’s carvings on the wooden walls that bloom a memory in his head and he finds himself unable to look away from the sight. His heart smiles at the memory.

Raven notices, and looks behind herself, catching what caught his attention as well.

When she looks back at him, she finds that he’s smiling at her, those tempting greens boring into her eyes until she feels special and bright in the overwhelming feeling of his sole attention.

He takes one hand off the top of the doorway to take her hand and pulling her into his chest, his sole arm wrapping around her waist. She can feel the beating of his heart and the way his tanned forearm is outlined in veins and muscle where it clings to the casing. She’s obsessed with the strength of his grip on her waist, the thought of being his and him being hers is something she cannot think about too long unless she melts into a flowery puddle.

He leans in, and her heart is blooming as his lips ghosts beneath her ears, kissing the skin firmly before his tongue swipes across. He presses the flat of it on the skin, biting and sucking in the air around the corners, bruising it in a way that makes her breathing stutter.

Her spine is riddled with a spine, her breath puffs out hot and heavy on his collarbone and he thinks he’s drowning.

Jason’s lips drift to her ears.

“I have a secret.”

Her eyes might be burning at the rendition of the memory, and she kisses the column of his throat and nuzzles his neck, cuddling him further.

“What’s your secret?”

“You’re my favorite,” Jason says, and he laughs quietly at the sweet childishness of it all, but then she tells him that it’s mutual and he kisses her cheeks repeatedly until she’s laughing too much.

And it’s an undeniable fact that they’ll never make it to the camp’s activities by the way Jason turned her around and pushes her to the cabin’s wall. And it’s another undeniable fact that their lips are slipping off each other in the entanglement of teeth because of their smiles they aren’t trying to hide anymore.

Beneath the ocean of Jason’s entire presence, Raven feels like she’s drowning until her body and her skin dissipates to become the water, floats in his being and his memory; in the curves of his lips slotting perfectly into hers, in the firm hold of her clutched waist and every unspoken and kissed whisper echoing into her lungs. There’s a shadow of children between them, wide eyed and golden and almost there but broken, and they’re forever alive in the way the color of their eyes know one another and the way their lips speak in the laughter of a nearly forgotten language. A language that is theirs and unbelievably so; one that sounds different in the melody of the atmosphere. It sounds watery and sorrowful on rainy nights, clutching hands and confessions and sweet and bubbly in the morning hours of their warmed bodies awakening to everything their dreams had concocted.

But now, their language is full of lengthy sighs and breathy voices, screaming content and relief and relaxation and desire. It mingles with the sound of their memories, with the creaking of the wooden cabin and the wind chimes that ring beautifully with the sunshine that settles on them, and the birds that tweet and tumble in the autumn air. It's prettier than a song and brighter than blinding the stars.

It is, irrefutably and ineffably, them.


End file.
